2013/06 NWT trip - News from Hope |
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Dear All,
Some of these paragraphs and pictures are only available via the family's userids and passwords |
We’d come back just in time for a May heatwave, with seventies and eighties for a couple of weeks. The river had reached the bottom of 
the river bank, and was coming up at about a foot a day, much earlier than last year. The same was true for the plants which were galloping along with the heat.
We had to take advantage of the good weather so we started the backyard project, loading up with blocks from Rona, and building the first retaining wall on house side of the path. I was far from fit to do this so Sandie did most of the digging for me.
I’d received a very official-looking letter from the IRS, the US tax service, informing me that I’d miscalculated my 2012 tax return, and enclosing a cheque for the difference. We decided to hang onto the cheque until we’re next in Minnesota, and then we’ll have a party; the cheque was for $1.
Not so good was Sandie’s experience with her medical records. Her doctor here in Hope had requested her records from our previous clinic in Minnesota. Her doctor there had retired and sold the clinic a couple of years back, and some agency had been given the job of handling the records. They shipped the originals in a flimsy envelope, and all that arrived in Hope was the cover letter requesting payment. So if they were stolen, Sandie’s set up for identity theft, but there’s no regulation on this kind of service, no one you can contact to complain to.
She also went to the same eye doctor as me and found that she was having the same cataract operations as me and Jim. If the operations weren’t already free we could ask for a neighbourhood discount. The bad news though was that she also has macular degeneration in one eye, inherited from her Mum, and there is no certain treatment for that; the condition causes blind spots.
Her first cataract op was scheduled for early July. And suddenly we had to firm up our plans for a summer trip to the Northwest Territory. Her final quilting meeting was in early June, so we’d have four weeks to go north from BC to the NWT and then south through Alberta to see Karen’s family. By this time we had completed excavation for the second wall and had this gigantic trench which we really ought to fill in before we had people or bears falling in. We also had to get the camper loaded onto the truck; the truck bed was currently full of blocks and topsoil.
In the meantime the river had crested, just at the bottom of our new steps. The pile of rocks we use to get down from there to the river bed has gone, but that’s inevitable; there’s so much power in the river that it generates its own waves. This scoter was at the bottom of the steps, a rare visitor, maybe blown off course. Our favourite walk through the woods was underwater too, with the Fraser backing up into the Coq in this picture.
We had another of those weird Canadian elections, this time for the BC government. The ruling party was extremely unpopular, with good reason, and twenty percent behind in the polls. In the days before the election their campaign was plagued with scandals, mistakes, and apologies. So what happened? They won with an increased majority. Perhaps it was a case of the BC electorate voting for the lying, incompetent thieves it already knew.
Our last few days in Hope were the usual frantic whirl. The second retaining wall was completed and backfilled. The irrigation system was up and running. The camper went back on the truck, which sprung a leak in the tranny cooler pipe. So the camper came off, the pipe was fixed, and the camper went back on again.
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