In August 1969, almost exactly fifty years ago, three days of music, peace & love in upstate New York defined a generation and became a legend against which every future music festival would be judged. For us, the Woodstock anniversary thus brings significance to our stay in the tiny Cook Inlet town of Ninilchik, site of the annual Salmonfest music festival – “three days of fish, love & music at the cosmic center of the salmonverse.”
Continue reading “Ninilchik – Salmonfest 2019”
I got an email about a month ago from Dana, my old friend and college roommate. Among other news, in this email he mentioned a trip upon which he and Muffin were about to embark to BC and the Yukon. I wrote back that we’d just come up through there, had that day entered Alaska, and were planning on spending the next couple of months exploring there before heading back towards home through BC and the Yukon. There ensued a series of “Wait, what?!” emails back and forth and, to summarize, we figured out that we could arrange at the end of June to rendezvous in Tok, which is Alaska’s ultimate crossroads where the Alaska Highway meets and splits from roads in every possible direction.
Continue reading “Tok Rendezvous”
Last July we stopped on our way to Calgary for a visit in Linden, AB with my friend Larry and his wife Barb. Larry is a guitar-playing blues brother that I met through Blues Guitar Unleashed (BGU), as we’ve both been working our way through learning to play the blues. Well, we had a fine time and it seemed a great idea to see if we could stop by again as we head for Alaska. Answers: yes, we can stop by, and yes, it was great!
Continue reading “Jammin’ with Lucky Larry”
The more we travel, the more places there are that we have been to, and the more likely we are to cross a path we’ve followed before. Such was the case as we figured how we were going to get from St. Louis to Vermont. Suppose we went up to Michigan, then back into Canada and around the north side of Lake Erie? Well, looky here, that path might go right by Kalamazoo!
That word Smokin’ in the title is an intentional double-entendre. Both potential interpretations are relevant and accurate.
We’d taken an excursion to Penticton for a visit, and part of our intention after that was to spend a little more time away from the national parks in the Canadian Rockies during the prime vacation period. Well, right between Penticton and Revelstoke is this place called Salmon Arm (which you can pronounce like “seminar,” except you add an M at the end) where they’ve been putting on a huge music festival for three days every August for, like, 28 years.
Continue reading “Salmon Arm, BC: Smokin’ Roots & Blues Festival”
Barring something unforeseen, Penticton, BC is the farthest west we will venture on this trip. We’d actually intended to begin moving eastward again from Revelstoke, but as we were filling in the details we found out that Lisa Brokop and Paul Jefferson would be doing a show a few hours from there at right about the same time we were in the area. Lisa is a Canadian singer/songwriter now based in Nashville. Her husband, American singer/songwriter Paul Jefferson, is my cousin.
We love Northwest Territories and have thoroughly enjoyed our travels here, and we hope that sentiment has come through in our 3 prior posts. In those, we’ve included observations and thoughts about diversity, friendly people, great music, interesting small towns, and a unique city. This post includes a few more of our thoughts about the Northwest Territories and a few noteworthy things that didn’t make it into any of the other three. We did a post kind of like a year ago in Utah that we called “the space between.” This is in that same spirit.
To start with, as it says on their license plate – the only one in the world shaped like a polar bear – Northwest Territories is spectacular!
Larry highly recommended we stop at the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, AB, on the way out of Calgary. He said we’d like it, but he wouldn’t say why. Hmm. Well, Larry seems to understand us, and our sense of humor, so why not?
At one point in my life (or maybe a couple of them, to be honest) I’ve been a moderately serious Star Trek fan. Sue ultimately joined me in this enthusiasm, and I’m not ashamed to admit that one winter we binge-watched the entire Star Trek: Next Generation series on Netflix, in order, two episodes per night, from start to finish.
Anyway, to the point of this post…
Linden, Alberta is a town about an hour’s drive northeast of Calgary with a few more than 800 residents. Two of those residents are pictured with us in the photo above.