Travels With Miranda

Bah.

I have been off Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons for a couple of weeks, so I decided to wrangle for tomorrow morning off as well, giving me my first full day off at home since I arrived in Dawson. I was pretty psyched to be off at 2 today all the way to 11AM Thursday morning and had a whole list of things that needed to be done.

Of course, I woke up with a sore throat. I don’t think I’m actually sick but rather in need of some rest. So, I put on a couple of movies I borrowed from the library and did something that only happens when pigs fly: I sewed. I don’t do sewing machines, so the project involved several hours worth of hand stitching after several hours worth of pinning and cutting.

This used to be part of a bedsheet and will soon be gracing the window of the toilet room:

just a teaser...

The print has grown on me since I bought the fabric way back in Campbell River and it just so happens to perfectly match three of the colours I bought in Whitehorse. So expect to see more of it. 🙂

It’s March 19th already (bonne fête, mom!); I have been here five months now and there is just over a month to go. I suspect the next few weeks will be industrious!

No, I have not made any progress on the renos this work week, which ends at 10:15PM tonight (Friday). I have a very good excuse for that.

My contract requires me to do 10 hours per week to a maximum of 20. Up until this week, there was never enough work to get the minimum 10 hours. This week, there has been. I have been getting up ‘early’ to do up to an hour and a half of contract work, going into the gas station for my eight and a quarter hour shift, and then coming home to do anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours more work at the contract, depending on task availability.

Most days I’ve only been able to do less than than that, today I did more. Their week runs Monday through Sunday, so I have until then to do my ten hours for this week. I am frustrated that there were few tasks available earlier this week when it was too rainy and cold to work on my renos but that the current trend allows me to expect that I will need to put in some serious hours in the next few days, when it will be nice enough to do renos. Gah!

Contract not withstanding, the dishwasher counter is going to be done this weekend. In fact, I intend for every single front room project to be done by Tuesday night. The weather is supposed to cooperate and I am going to make full use of it.

Tonight, I am absolutely beat both physically and intellectually. I have ‘help’ for half of my Thursday and Friday shifts and I always ask the gal to work the cash and do indoor jobs while I go do the outside jobs, which makes both of us happy. Outdoor jobs don’t suck as much as one would expect because you’re outdoors! Unless the weather is really horrible, I’m much happier hauling the garbage, hosing down the carwash, washing the gas pumps (you read that correctly), and sweeping up trash. With it being light out much later now, I can spend a solid two hours doing outside chores.

There was a spring in my step today since I made the decision to switch to my hiking boots. Yesterday was the proverbial straw for me sore feet-wise, where they went from being sore to actually hurting. Working in my boots today was heaven; the only reason I haven’t done so before is their appearance, scuffed beyond redemption and splattered with Nugget City stain. The boots are not yet a year old, but fording rivers, traipsing through snow, fighting muddy bogs, and trekking through sand (not to mention doing hard labour in them) has given them a worn appearance in a very short amount of time. I don’t begrudge them their well-worn appearance as they will be my most trusty and comfortable footwear for many, many years. And they are going to help me get through my next twenty-four or so shifts!

Well, a hot bath is singing its siren song, promising to soothe my aching muscles. I cannot ignore it. 🙂

Well, I can scratch “Hiking in Pacific Rim National Park” off my bucket list….

When I was studying natural resources in college, many of my teachers were from out west and they regaled us with their tales of life on the ‘wet coast.’ I heard so many stories about Pacific Rim National Park and it just sounded so exotic, with its redwood stands and and moss-draped trees. I couldn’t imagine a scenario that could take me here, other than my doing so after retirement. I made up this vague plan of maximizing my time out west by doing the West Coast Trail and then taking the Inside Passage up to Skagway to do the Chilkoot. How narrow my vision was back then!

While I’m still interested in doing the West Coast Trail, a grueling 75km trek over beaches and through rain forest, I’ve pretty much conceded that the Chilkoot will be the one and only major hike of my life. My knees haven’t recovered from those brutal 50km and have been worse than ever. Before the Chilkoot, I hadn’t had a blowout in exactly two years; I’ve had three since getting back. My current job, with its 33 hours a week of standing on a hard surface combined with a lot of crouching isn’t helping, nor is the damp weather that always seems to make the swelling worse. It’s only because I’m accustomed to this grating pain that I can do any hiking, walking, or running for pleasure. Soon as I get my Yukon healthcare squared away, I’ve conceded that I need to have a professional take a look and perhaps prescribe a brace or other supporting device.

All that to say that when I looked at the list of trail options for today, I focused on doing the ones that didn’t seem to have too much climbing or descending, but I did end up doing quite a bit of both.

I warmed up with the Bog Trail, an easy (and wheelchair accessible) loop on a boardwalk through a bog filled with stunted and twisted shorepine trees, some hundreds of years old. They looked like bonsai, making me feel very small. It was otherworldly and immensely enjoyable.

Next came the Nuu-chah-nulth Trail and its offshoot, the South Beach Trail. The Ncn Is 2.5km one way; add about 400m to go to South Beach, too. There are interpretive signs which provide information about the local native culture. South Beach is an isolated, wind-swept cove with a pebble beach. I had intended to hike the Ncn both ways, but 99% of it is on boardwalks, which were impossibly slick. After a few near misses, I decided to just hike back via the road. By the time I got back to the car, I was soaked to the bone and very grateful there was some bread, cheese, peanuts, and a juicy apple waiting for me. 🙂

Next, I stopped at Long Beach, which is famous for being the longest stretch of surf swept sand on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Surfing here is quite dangerous because of rip currents.

My next stop wasn’t on my map, so I’m not sure what it’s all about other than it being called ‘Incinerator Rock.’ The view was spectacular!

Finally, I hiked the short, accessible, trail to the top of Radar Hill, which had been slated to be a radar installation during the Cold War. There is also a lovely tribute to those Canadians killed in the Korean War, erm ‘police action’ (*cough, cough*).

The Pacific Ocean looks nothing like the Atlantic. The water is more blue than grey, the sand more white than cream. I stood in the surf of several beaches today and was convinced that I could tell just by the sound of the surf which coast I was on.

The following picture gallery has more information on the trails I hiked today: