Kathleen and I have been busy doing our normal activities while we self-isolate at home. In fact, we are actually still enjoying life. For the past three days, we have endured a lot of wind, plus periodic snow showers. We were finally able to get out this morning to repack our 8 km (5 miles) of trails, which blow in, particularly in the open areas. This provides much firmer footing when walking our dog.
We normally ride together, but I'm taking the picture. You might notice that we are pulling a "drag" behind the ski-doo. When we moved to Preeceville in 2008, we found this drag, homemade from culvert pipe, in a shed. It's a bit dilapidated, but serves our purpose of packing the trails very well.
The 14-day weather forecast promises that beginning April 16, all daytime high temperatures will be above freezing. On April 20, the daytime high will soar to 16 C (61 F). On April 21, the overnight low will remain above freezing at 4 C (39 F).
This naturally has us thinking of summer, and our trip planned to the Barren Grounds out of Yellowknife, NWT. Yesterday I called Stephen of Ahmic Air, who is still operating pretty much as regular. No cancellations yet. But right now, anyone coming to the NWT has to self-isolate for 14 days in either Fort Smith, Hay River, Inuvik or Yellowknife. We certainly wouldn't want to begin our canoe trip by self-isolating. Stephen said that the NWT is talking about re-opening on July 1. That would be doable, in terms of our itinerary, but we're beginning to think that maybe we don't want to risk exposure on the 6-7 day drive up toYellowknife. In fact, we wonder, would we even want to be confined in the cockpit of the float plane with a pilot, who, for all we know, might be infected? This sheltering at home has made us a little leery of resuming contact with people and crowds, even when the threat is mostly over.
So what to do instead?
Our property borders the north shore of Lake Lomond. There are only four other houses on the lake. When we moved here, I built a canoe rack at the water's edge, but we have paddled on the lake only a few times in 11 years. It just didn't seem exciting enough. Well, maybe we should spend the summer just enjoying what we have right at our door step. Life could be a lot worse! Not really canoe tripping, but canoeing, nevertheless.