11/1: End of the Rainbow: Last Post

The last stop on my Grand Tour was where I began, at my friend Annie's in Brunswick, Maine. You can compare the two pics of the Androscoggin River ramp to see how long it took -- from high summer to autumn.

Annie was there when I arrived, reading her email. She'd had the other hip surgery and while still limping a bit, didn't seem to have to use the walker.

We had a quiet evening. I was pretty tired from all the driving and looked forward to a long day the next day, when I would try and make it all the way home, especially so as to get there before what's now been called post tropical storm Noel got to Halifax.

I'd been speaking with Zeb nightly via Skype video conferencing, way cool, I have to say. He was somewhat worried and wanted me to get home sooner than later and I wanted to get home before winter.

However, nature had one little fillip left for me to see. An amazing full rainbow appeared over the house next door to Annie's with a beautiful autumn amber light. These two pics show one look at what came out from the camera and one after I photoshopped it with "auto levels." The red one looks extra-terrestrial, I must say. And one little one with a plane going through the rainbow.

I woke up at 7 am and got my earliest start for the whole trip.

I had to take a few snooze breaks, but was able to make it back home by 7 pm that night. Needless to say, I was quite wiped out.

Turns out I made it in time to help Zeb prepare for Noel. Because we live in a hydrostone, built after the 1917 Halifax Explosion (here's a website you can look at about it: http://www.halifax.ca/community/explode.html. And a CBC website that has a few photos: http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-70-971/disasters_tragedies/halifax_explosion/.

As you can see, we didn't suffer too much damage from the storm. That's Zeb on our deck. The other pic is of a tree down across the alley from us on Stanley Street. It was gone in about three days. As you can see, the roots are really shallow, so the whole thing toppled down, luckily for the neighbors, it landed right in between their houses, only trashing their fence and a bit of the roof of an entryway.

We went over to Anita and Wayne's the next day when the electricity went out. They have a wood stove and very sweetly made us a hot breakfast (as well as brewed some tea for their 92-year-old next door neighbor). But, we were back up to speed by evening.

I ended up getting this weird thing happening with my balance -- when I turned my head, especially if I was lying down, I'd get incredibly dizzy like I was spinning around. The doctor said this happens to people who drive long distances, as the car jiggles, something flakes off in your inner ear and as it settles and swirls in the liquid in there, you feel on a more macro scale the motion. It was fairly intense, though once I'd been up for a few hours it wasn't too bad. Took about a week and a half to go away. So, that's why I didn't get back to the blog as quickly as I might have.

This will be my last post for this adventure. It's been really amazing and well worth it and I deeply thank everyone I met on my journey for their unstinting generosity and cheer.

Signing off for now,

Carol (aka Fearless Wildflower)