...After one modest week of Eastern Sierras camping in the summer of 2000, we were again hit by the “big vacation bug” this year (the “empty savings account inoculation” wore off) and we indulged in a three-week extravaganza in August, driving 6400 miles in a great triangle to Minnesota and western Canada. The highlights of the hypotenuse were Santa Fe and Minneapolis, where we had dinner with my cousin, enjoyed a great production of Amadeus at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, saw a Japanese manga exhibit at the Walker Art Center, took in some real Minnesota culture at the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, and then—the pièce de résistance—canoed the Boundary Waters wilderness near the Minnesota-Canadian border. Altogether, we covered 19 lakes and 19 portages in five days, a circular route of about 50 miles, which is quite an accomplishment for the four of us, even though our Canadian-accented outfitter, Frank Jr., and his friend once did the entire route in 18 straight hours (I should note, however, that Frank Jr. is in his early 20s, was not carrying packs on his trip, and has biceps the size of my thighs). We encountered a thunderstorm the first day out, paddling like mad to an island campsite and putting up our tent just before the downpour hit, but the weather after that was gorgeous and the scenery—including otters and bald eagles—stunningly beautiful. For the most part, Megan and Anna teamed in canoe #1 while Shana and I did a pas de deux in the other, with Koko admirably performing her role as Indian canoe dog. With good maps and a Cracker-Jack® compass, we avoided getting lost, although on Day 5 I miscalculated the effect of a headwind and I became “a mite bewildered” as to our location for an hour or so (Megan eventually figured out what happened, and she will be nominated for a Girl Scout badge when the opportunity presents itself). For those of you considering a similar adventure, I recommend planning menus on the basis of weight; there was no way for us to lift an 80 pound pack of store-bought comestibles into a tree, and bear-proofing for us consisted of camping on islands and throwing our food pack into a bush. We also deprived ourselves of the superb (but expensive) outfitter’s cuisine; I heard the freeze-dried crème bruele was outstanding. Of course, most people in the Boundary Waters just fish for dinner, but three of us are vegetarians and, after canoeing for six hours, cleaning a trout wasn’t what I had in mind anyway.
The next leg of the trip took us across Canada from Lake of the Woods to Vancouver, via Banff National Park. From Calgary to the West Coast the scenery is so unrelentingly spectacular that I found myself longing for the urban sprawl of southern California after two days. In Vancouver (and later in Seattle), we met my brother Gary and his wife Sue, who flew out from Hartford to see us and my nephew Brian, whose leg was pulled so often in his youth by my father that he is now designing below-the-knee prosthetics in a doctoral program at the University of Washington. After seeing friends Alan & Patt in the San Juan Islands and the Brummet clan in Seattle, we drove to Ashland for an Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Troilus and Cressida, toured Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento, had lunch with my other brother Darrell in Sausalito (and met his girlfriend Trina for the first time), and saw Anna’s childhood friend Sally Ames and family in the San Luis Obispo area. Well rested and happy, we arrived home on Labor Day weekend, and began getting ready for school and Megan’s birthday on September 11...