Jim and Ellie onboard Meta Fog

Retirement Trip

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:21:01 GMT

We retired September 19 and lsft for New England. We could gaze fondly eastward toward Newfoundland pretty sure we will be back there on Meta Fog next summer.

This trip was about hiking, tenting, eating lobster and visiting old, they go way back, friends.

We had wonderful hiking in Maine. The trails were friendly and the vistas continual. We stayed in Southwest Harbor on Mt. Desert. There were NO t-shirt or fudge shops. Our morning ritual, after crawling out of the tent was a walk to the seawall to meditate on the beauty and get warmed by the sun. Breakfast came out of the cooler, coffee was in town with a good book, then on to the trails about noon. We hiked until we couldn't, then found a little place with wine and lobster for dinner. After four days of beautiful sun, we had thick fog and drove to Schoodic Point for a rest day. We intended to take a short hike but the loop was longer than we thought and dumped us on the road where our car was not. We did not know which the one way road went, or which way our car was. Eventually a car came along (they had actually seen our car and "wondered about it"), so we could set off. This is the stuff that gives our kids bad dreams.

New Hampshire was next and was a series of disappointments. The weather turned cold so we had to dig to find a B&B due to all the people coming to see the "colors" that weren't. The owner was a pathological liar. He set the table for six and kept insisting there were others staying in the house, they had just left, etc. We were right by the stairs--there was no one else. Creepy! Even the bad food was a little suspicious. The hiking was hard. I insisted on plan B when 20 feet up the first trail we found a ladder jambed into the vertical granite rock with rungs four feet apart. And that was just the beginning. The ranger had suggested two other trails. He overestimated us and took us for youngsters as these went either straight up or straight down and weren't even pretty until you got to the top. Too grueling. We left and drove to Vermont.

In Vermont we restored our soles and our souls. We sat and read even longer in the mornings and took short drives to short walks. We thought about renting bikes to ride on the wonderful bike system in Burlington on Lake Champlain but the wind was blowing really hard and it was looking like a bad idea since we had to go more than one way. Our tent was protected from the wind so we were howled to sleep at night. The food was great and less pricey than NH. We were happy.

We have come home to enjoy our lack of schedule. We have to ask each other what day it is. We might have to go to the system they use in the hospitals and mark off the days. What a treat!

It's ain't sailing, but it was fun!

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:29:53 GMT

Just back from 12 days of biking, hiking, and camping. After the traditional stop at Tobies for breakfast, we rode the Munger trail in Duluth. We stopped in Superior for an hour with Judy and Bill Rohde who had taken a few days off their cruise (then in L. Michigan) to attend the GLCC rendevous. Then set up the tent for the first time in Bayfield, WI. A day-long ride on Madeline Island preceded a long chat with Jim Plummer on board their boat (Bonnie was in the cities), and a brief visit with Rachel and Claus on Kyanna as they were making final preparations to begin their cruise. Then it was off to the Porcupine Mountains where we slowed down a bit and enjoyed the cool breezes off Lake Superior and the Escarpment Trail above the Lake of the Clouds.

Originally intending to move on to Escanaba, MI, to visit old haunts sailed to when we owned a Flicka almost 30 years ago, we changed our minds and drove to Copper Harbor to set up camp on the shores of Lake Fanny Hooe. We rode the shore road to Eagle Harbor, a spectacular experience. We stumbled into the Thimble Berry Jam Festival, yes, that's right. We listened to some top flight bluegrass and to a highschool big jazz band that was just back from winning second place in the Wisconsin jazz contest. We had dinner at the golf course and convention center, but the Tamarak restaurant is still the place to dine in Copper Harbor. We were now a long way from Door County,WI, so took our first motel in Hancock on the Keewanau Waterway in Houghton, MI. The leisurely drive next day was highlighted by a picnic lunch at the marina in Escanaba, one of our favorite stops when sailing Green Bay in our Flicka.

We camped for another four days in the Peninsula State Park. While there, we circumnavigated Washington Island on our bikes. Another day, we went again to the Island taking the pedestria ferry, the Karfi, over to Rock Island State Park for a long hike which meant another bike trek across Washington Island. But this day was capped by a late lunch at the Wash. Is. Hotel, which runs a cooking school. We had sandwiches of heirloom tomatoes. Oh, my!! Jim tried a wheat beer brewed at the Hotel from grain grown on the Island.

We were nearing the end of the trip and, as the forecast was for storms (which as it turned out never came), we opted for a hotel especially as we had another long day of driving ahead of us. Ellie discovered that our motel, the Pine Manor, (in Ephriam) is built on the spot of an old lodge of the same name where she had waited tables in the summer when she was in college. The bunkhouse where the help slept was still there. Ellie commented that she was perhaps the oldest returning employee of the place!

We ended our trip in Spring Green, WI, meeting Karen and Bob (Karen is Ellie's friend from her college days. They stay in our house for a few weeks each summer while we are out gallavanting). After sharing a picnic lunch we joined them for a fun production of Shaw's Misalliance in the ampitheater (Guthrie quality too!).

Having read it during the trip, Jim thinks every American should read All the Shah's Men, by Steven Kinzer. It appears to be a technically accurate (the Russians have not yet opened their files), spellbinding tale, plus a very readable summary of the massive literature on the Mosadech coup in Iran in 1953 and related history. It explains in a nutshell how we got ourselves into this mess in the Middle East. We have been botching matters for a while. There is plenty of blame to go around. Truman comes off, again, as wise, but everyone else from Churchill on through the Dulles brothers lose a little of their luster.

Finally, we arrived home at about 11:00pm and fell into our own bed leaving the car to unload and clean up for today.

Altogether, we rode bikes 25-30 miles five or six times plus additional shorter rides, we camped, tent and all, nine days and took a motel three. We were both surprised that we did that much tenting. It is a bore bending and unbending to get out of and into the tent at night for the necessary hikes to the "comfort station", but we found we were limber enough to do it. And we still enjoy sleeping in the woods with the night air wafting through the tent. (It helped that the weather was near perfect, of course. Packing up the tent in the rain would have been gruesome. And there were almost no black flies.) We did breakfast out of the cooler, and lunch too most days, eating out for dinner, a pampering treat we allowed ourselves.

latest on Ellie and the boat

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:38:12 GMT

The saga of Ellie's symptoms continues. We decided some time ago to forego sailing this summer as so much was unclear about what steps needed to be taken to treat the Afib. She has been in sinus rhythm now for two months while on several drugs to keep her heart rate under control. We did a ten day trip to the Olympic mountains in northwest Washington visiting Ellie's brother and sisterinlaw and an old friend of ours whom we met in Cuba six years ago. Finally, we were beginning to feel normal again.

Then, just as we deplaned back in MPLS, she developed blurry and double vision. So per the cardiologist's instructions, we went straight to the ER. After six hours and more tests, they decided that the symptoms were a side effect of one of her meds, amiodorone. They recommended that she stop taking it until we could consult with her cardiologist on next steps.

Stay tuned.

The Boat and where she is.

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:49:57 GMT

We are still in the process of deciding what to do this summer due to Ellie's health issue. For those of you who do not know, she developed Afib sometime in January, we think. She is being treated for it. There is no immediate threat to life, but we may have to curtail our sailing agenda. This year for sure we have decided not to sail to Labrador, but beyound that we have not yet learned enough about how to manage the problem to make further decisions.

If any of you want to have more detail on her status and the events of the last few months, please send Jim an email at jhawkins@visi.com and he will send you a summary with all the medical stuff written out.

Cancellation of the Labrador trip has been quite a bummer. Missing out on the adventure itself is enough to sadden us, but we have been in contact with four other boats that are planning to go there this season. We were so looking forward to having some companionship on the water with other sailors. While we may yet decide to go to Labrador in '08, it will likely be another solo adventure--not quite the same.

Meta Fog is on the hard, as we say, in Lewisporte, Newfoundland. It is in the care of Ivan Boone with Peter Watkins and others reporting in to us on her status. We are glad to have Ivan and Peter in our corner as it really opens all options to us. We could leave Meta Fog there for another year with no worries, if it comes to that.