Autumn Brings Care-Giving Family Time

While we have enjoyed time exploring Alaska, the west coast, and Newfoundland this spring and summer, fall usually brings us closer to our roots for more family time. This year's family time took a twist when we got the call that Denisa's Mother, Betty, had been exposed to Covid. She was visiting a friend from college, who didn't know she had been exposed several days before. Sure enough, Betty eventually started feeling bad and tested positive herself. She's already had two vaccine shots, so we were hoping that her case would be light. She ended up in the hospital when her oxygen level dropped a little, and a couple days on oxygen were enough. But she was weak from the virus, and couldn't care for herself. It's an interesting problem when one isn't sick enough for the hospital, but still needs help, but they are contagious with the dreaded Corona virus. We were glad that the hospital in Beaver offers respite care, where she could get help until her ten days (the CDC's definition of being contagious) were over. We drove to pick her up at the hospital the day she was released. After being in isolation for ten days, she was happy to be outside. Still very weak, she was glad to be back home and around people again. This 91-year-old had survived Covid 19! We didn't take any pictures at the time, but we'll include one from later to report that she is doing better.

We spent the next few days washing all the clothes and dishes and surfaces around her house that might have any trace of the virus. The CDC has changed their mind many times concerning how long Covid can linger, and we washed and lysoled everything just to be sure. After cleaning and taking care of Denisa's Mother for four days, we delivered her to Denisa's sister on our way to another care-giver gig. This one was in the Kansas City area, and we are on the opposite end of the age spectrum this time. From a 91-year-old patient, we are going to take care of a 3-year-old granddaughter, and a grandson that hasn't yet had a first birthday. We headed to our son and daughter-in-law's house. 

We have to sneak in some pictures of our beautiful grandbabies!

But the real reason we came this time was because our son was having foot surgery. He'll literally be off his feet for a week, so we are here to care for him and these babies, while his wife is getting scuba certified this weekend.

We had some great weather for some trips to the park while Luke had his foot up at home.

We also did some exploring around the neighborhood. That's where you find interesting things like inch-worms, that Carter loves to hold.

She loaded the inch-worm into the wagon, and we took it for a walk.

We've been on a lot of hikes and walks in our travels, but we can't say that we've ever taken a worm for a walk before. We had no idea how many times a three-year-old has to stop and check on the welfare of that worm, so it was a very loooooong walk.

Our destination was to see the neighborhood horses, and Carter was a little disappointed that they weren't interested in her worm. But we were so pleased that Mary came out to see us while we visited her horses. She had treats that the horses were very interested in, so it was a great walk around the neighborhood! Special greetings to our friend Mary!

This care-giving stint was lots of fun, filled with making more day-to-day memories.

Because it is fall, we celebrated with baking a giant pumpkin cookie. Carter was being careful until she figured out that the more frosting you get on your fingers, the more you get to lick off.

She was also in charge of the sprinkles. A pumpkin can never have too many sprinkles!

Earlier we blogged about our new-found rubik's cube skills. Well, we are passing on our new skills. Home from scuba-class, Jordan was a great student. She was enthusiastic about learning how to solve a cube.

Luke was less enthusiastic about this new skill.

But when you spend a week with your foot propped up, it seems a good use of time.

Eli was also fascinated with the cube, and he's almost got it figured out.

On another beautiful weather day, we made a trip to the Red Barn Farm near Weston, Missouri.

Carter was happy with this trip, because they have horses!

And she has a Grand-dude that will pretend to be a horse and give her rides,

and Gram will give rides in the wheelbarrow.

Thanks Jordan for taking us to the farm today!

This fall's stint of care-giving has run the gamut from Covid-19 to foot surgery; from a 1-year-old to a 91-year-old; from pumpkin cookies to pumpkin patches. Happy autumn while we're off the road for a while for a little care-giving family time!

On a scale of 1 to 10, you're a 13.1!

When we were planning our trip to Newfoundland, the return flight had to get us back to Oklahoma City for a very important event. We drove in last night so we could be here to see the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. This race memorializes the 168 people that died in the Murrah Building bombing in April, 1995. It's usually ran in April, but the race was cancelled in 2020 and and postponed until the autumn in 2021. While the last race had 24,000 runners, this year was limited to a mere 12,000. You can see runners filling the width of the street for as far as you can see in the picture below.

While many of the 12,000 runners left an hour ago on the full 26.2 mile marathon route, we're here to watch the half-marathoners that are lined up now. We are especially interested in that tall good-looking runner in the white shirt on the fourth row from the front right in the center of the picture below. He's the only one in the picture below that is following the suggested protocol of keeping his mask on until the race starts. It's a little hard to keep a 6-foot social distance with thousands of people huddled up to the start line.

All the pictures are a little fuzzy because Denisa is taking them from the broadcast on television. With thousands of people running in downtown Oklahoma City, roads are closed and the traffic is crazy. It was impossible to be at the starting line, so we had to be content to watch the start on television . . . and they're off!

This is Blake's first race ever, and he's been training for several months. For some reason, he couldn't get his mind to go to sleep last night. He estimated he only got two hours of rest before his very early alarm clock went off this morning. That's not exactly the most rested state to start a 13.1 mile run today. Denisa took one more blurry picture, as we watched Blake (in the center of the picture below) run right off the screen.

That means it was time for "Team Blake" to go into action. Our team includes our daughter-in-law Claire, and her parents. Armed with signs of encouragement, the five of us and two dogs headed to the first place that we can intersect the runners at Edgemere Park. 

That's almost a one-mile walk from their house, and we needed to hustle because Blake estimated he would arrive around 8:12 to 8:25 (depending on when the race actually got started and how his run was going). He arrived for this picture at 8:12, and he gave us a smile and a thumbs up. He looks great for having already run 6 miles this morning!

After we gave him encouragement at Edgemere Park, we took our signs and dogs and quickly walked the mile toward Classen Boulevard to see the racers again. Blake estimated it would take him around 22 minutes, so we had to quickly walk our shorter path to that point. The mother instincts in Denisa came out when we saw him at this intersection. After nine miles, he looks a little tired and he's three minutes slower than the pace he wanted.

Mark had downloaded the race app so that we could watch Blake's progress this morning. We could also watch other friends if we had their race numbers. It's interesting that we can also see the official water stations. Are those red crosses on the map emergency medical stops available? Now Denisa is really worried about her baby!

After Blake ran out of our sight, we could only watch Mark's phone screen to watch his progress until the finish line. He was planning on a time under one hour and 40 minutes, so he was a little disappointed with his 1:44:06 finish time. While his first miles were at a pace just over 7 minutes, he slowed to almost 8 minutes by the end of the race. Personally, we think that running 8-minute miles for 13.1 miles is amazing!

We waited here to see several more friends run by, and then we headed towards the finish line to pick up Blake. He doesn't have his phone, but he told Claire where to park and where he would walk after the race. We decided that we wouldn't be walking anywhere if we had just ran 13 miles! We got a picture of the two of them after the race, with that well-deserved medal around Blake's neck.

We drove him back to their house, and had a little snack. Both of the mothers celebrated birthdays this month, so they had cupcakes for us at their house. Denisa is really spreading her 60th birthday party out this year.

Then surprisingly, Blake wanted to walk down to the race route to encourage other runners. Even though he's been finished for an hour by this time, we are seeing plenty of half-marathoners pass by. One even noticed his race bib, saw his medal, and smiled and called him a "show-off."

At this point we are still seeing thousands of marathoners and half-marathoners go by. Some are walking and some are still jogging. The marathoners have gone around 19 miles by this point, and everyone is very tired. They all have different reasons for putting their bodies through this, including this veteran that carried an American flag for the entire race.

We had never witnessed a race with so many runners before, and it was a fun day. While all the racers went further, we managed to log in seven miles ourselves. The weather was beautiful, and we couldn't be prouder of our racer! On a scale of 1 to 10, we think Blake is a 13.1!

Newfoundland Summary - A Unique Place and the Unique Things We Noticed During our Holiday

When we visit a place that is new to us, we often notice things that are unique to that location. After two and a half weeks on the unique island of Newfoundland, Canada, we made a list of things that are different here.

After driving across the entire province, the highest speed limit we remember seeing posted was 100. If you think that is fast, remember that is 100 KILOMETERS per hour, which is about 62 MILES per hour. But the thing that is unique to Newfoundland is that everyone drives considerably faster than the posted speed limit. If it is 100, the main flow of traffic seems to be 120, and if it is 50 then everyone is driving 70. In all our miles traveled, we never saw a single traffic stop and very few police vehicles, even though everyone is breaking the speed limits. Fuel isn't cheap here. We consistently saw gasoline selling for around $1.559 per liter. That would be $5.91 per gallon. Ouch!

While things are more urban in the city of St. John's, we loved traveling through the small villages of rural Newfoundland. We noticed that the houses throughout the province were very neat and well maintained, and that's a great uniqueness. We also noticed that most of the village houses were very plain in structure, and had little or no landscaping around them. They also don't put central air-conditioning in homes on this cool island. But we often saw mountains of firewood as people were getting ready for the long winter.

We also noticed that 90 percent of those village houses have glass windows in their front doors. This is a province known for its friendliness, and maybe that's why they wouldn't mind anyone coming to the door to look inside.

We noticed that friendly attitude with all the locals we met. Our favorite was the fisherman that explained his process for drying cod, and then wanted to give us one of his best fillets to try ourselves. We drove through the town of Gander, which welcomed 38 jetliners stuck in the air when the U.S. airspace was closed during 9-11. Suddenly this little town had 7,000 unexpected guests, and the local citizens all chipped in to feed them for most of a week. They've made a Broadway musical named "Come From Away" about that Gander experience that is based on the spirit of hospitality in Newfoundland.

Besides eating unique things like dried cod, Newfoundlanders have some other unique foods. We tried mooseburgers here, and scrunchies (little pork rinds). We did not try a local mainstay that you can purchase by the bucket-full--cured trimmed navel beef.

While English is the main language spoken in Newfoundland, we found that their version was often hard for us to understand. Especially the old-timers have a cajun-irish lilt to the language that we couldn't decipher at times. One of the favourite local phrases is "Yes B'y" and we thought it was fun when we saw it on a sign at the grocery store. From what we can tell, it is an exclamation of agreement, and it is sprinkled liberally into a conversation with a Newfoundlander.

Besides grocery stores, there are a few Walmart stores in larger population areas in this province. We saw evidence of different spellings here in words like "favourites" and "super centre." French is their second language, and most signs in public places are written in both English and French.

In our trip to Walmart we found that social distancing is strictly enforced. At the checkout they hire one person to stand guard and motion when the next person in the 6-foot-seperated line is allowed to approach one of the staffed registers.

We did a little shopping, and found we could make most purchases with our international credit card. We have to say that we had a uniquely difficult time getting some Canadian currency this trip. After striking out at several ATMs that rejected our cash card, we found it was our card's fault. Even though we had let our bank know that we would be traveling internationally, they never put the dates into their system. So our card kept being rejected at the ATMs. We just thought that Canada didn't want to give us any cash!

One of the delightful uniqueness of Newfoundland was the absence of bugs. Even though we visited before the first hard freeze, we never saw a mosquito. This is the land of lakes (usually called ponds) and rivers (usually called brooks), with standing water everywhere. So we can't explain why there are no mosquitoes. But we enjoyed sunsets by the lake without swatting the blood suckers that are so prevalent in Alaska.

One of the most unique parts of this island is the time zone. We had never heard of a thirty-minute time zone, but that's what they have here. While it is 7:24 in central time zone, it is 2.5 hours later in Newfoundland at 9:54. We never got a clear explanation for that unique time zone.

In Newfoundland, you don't go on a vacation--you go on a holiday. RVing is alive and well in this province, and we saw some beautiful boondocking spots where RVers are welcome to stay overnight for free. It looks like a great place to spend an entire season! Because it is a relatively small island, it's interesting that RVs for sale in Newfoundland have few miles on them because you don't have to drive far to go on holiday here. Yes b'y, this is a unique place, and some of our favourite things were the unique things we got to experience during our holiday!

Newfoundland - Saying Good-Bye to Newfoundland

After two and half weeks, we're sad to say that it's time to leave the beautiful island of Newfoundland. The last couple days were filled with more fun memories made in the house where we spent much of that time. It has a three-story glass view out the back windows.

Very early on our last morning, Mark saw a fox in the yard on the other side of those glass windows.

Mark didn't have a zoom lens, just his cell phone to record this close-up encounter.

At first, Mark thought the fox was eating an apple beside the plate glass window. Later we would find the remains of the red rubber ball that was masquerading as an apple.

This was also the same day that Alexia baked a home-made peach pie. Even with all our hiking, her good cooking has meant that we have gained weight on this vacation.

On our last day we had to stop off at a medical clinic to get our Covid test before our flight back into the United States. While Canada required the longer molecular Covid test, the United States will accept the faster test for our return trip. We had our negative Covid results within 15 minutes. We used this information to complete the pre-flight questionnaire, but no one ever asked to see our official test results when we went through customs to enter the United States.

Even though we didn't have to wear masks when we first arrived, we have to wear them now. That's because a recent outbreak of Covid has led to reinstating mandatory masks inside public buildings. That means that our school-age relatives are also having to wear masks all day at school. While the entire island had only 7 Covid deaths since the beginning of the pandemic a year and a half ago, we heard of two more deaths while we were visiting. (As we write this blog, we see that the number of Covid deaths in Newfoundland is now 17. There were nine in the first month after the border opened and activities started again.) While most of the Newfoundlanders are now vaccinated, they have no "herd-immunity" since the herd has been locked down for the last year and a half.

It was very dark at 4 a.m. when Alexia drove us to the airport. It's a 15-minute drive from their house, and we appreciated her getting up at that crazy hour to get us to our airplane on time. We were in the air by sun rise. Because we are flying straight west, we got to enjoy the sunrise for a very long time out our airplane window seat.

We have three flights today, but we won't have to spend the night between them this time. We even got to sit in business class for one of those flights. We feel pretty fancy sitting in those wide seats at the front of the plane!

We even got breakfast on that flight. We remember when even coach passengers got food, but this was more formal with cloth napkins and real glasses and plates. 

The catering company didn't deliver enough breakfast meals, so we got one lunch and one breakfast. We have to say that the breakfast was much better than the lunch. It was a little scary eating the raw salmon lunch entree this early in the morning.

We changed planes in Montreal, Canada, and again in Chicago, before we touched down on the final flight in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mark's brother and sister-in-law were there to greet us and deliver our pickup. We'll need it as we are heading right away to Oklahoma City for an important race. After saying good-bye to Newfoundland, we're saying hello to more adventures down the road.