Jasmine & Nazar on Vacation

Nazar & Jasmine in their traveling nest

I don't really take vacations. For the last six years I am never away from my virtual law office for more than a couple of days, just long enough to drive between Tucson and Whidbey Island. It's a forced march. I do the driving because I want to. Shari is up for the adventure. Our two furry children, Jasmine and Nazar, come along because they have no choice.

They are long suffering. Eleven to twelve hours at a stretch, they settle into their nest on the back seat next to the cooler which is stocked with snacks and numerous small tins of Starbuck's espresso. We let the dogs out for the occasional gasoline station and rest stop. Thank god for them that Shari and I drink coffee, otherwise rest stops would be ever fewer.

Sunrise rest stop on the Great Basin Highway, Nevada.

Jasmine, our ten-year old, knows the drill all too well. She eagerly jumps into the back seat. Nazar is two and athletic. He still needs a little coaxing. But even he has become resigned and resists less being picked up and placed on the back seat.

After six or eight hours, Jasmine no longer responds to conversation or her name. Her face remains buried on her front paws. Nazar starts talking and singing, as if to pass the time. Sometimes one or the other comes up front and sits on Shari's lap, but mostly they just hunker down in back.

Rest stops (which in Nevada can be the open road), gas stations, diner parking lots, and motel rooms are what Jasmine and Nazar know about the two and one-half day, 1600-1800 mile stretch (depending on the route).

All of which is to set up a scene in the reader's mind. Imagine two days on the road, over eleven hours each. Imagine arriving at our sister's house outside Walla Walla at the end of the second day. Imagine a fenced in backyard with a lush green lawn. Imagine how Jasmine and Nazar went nuts chasing each other and the frisbee, up and down the grassy strip, ecstatic.

Double Bluff, Whidbey Island

Shari and I had mixed feelings about returning to Lower Alaska. For Jasmine & Nazar, it was pure vacation. Two weeks of cool weather. Green lawns everywhere. Running about gardens and the ill-kept and recently bankrupt Holmes Harbor golf course by our house and Shari's mom's house. Chasing frisbees and the familiar smell of rabbits. (Jasmine knows that word really well.) We got more walks and runs in them each day than we typically get in several days in Tucson.

We even took them to the beach at Double Bluff where dogs and their owners can run off leash. I think Jasmine & Nazar prefer grass to sand, and I know that Aussie shepherds do not like being in water. But I had a good walk and Shari stayed on the wet, firm sand.

Visiting Lower Alaska

Ever since a cruise ship took me up the Alaskan coast, I have thought of Puget Sound in a different way. Puget Sound looks and feels a lot like Alaska, or British Columbia, or as Shari tells me, the south of Norway. Trees, bushes, weeds and grass cover the ground.

Puget Sound is Lower Alaska.

Talking with Whidbey Island friends during our recent two-week visit to the North, the subject of weather necessarily came up. I tried joking several times about visiting South Alaska or Norway, but nobody got the joke. When you are inside, you don't get the view from outside.

Our first morning I desperately wanted to go home. It didn't help that we were sleeping on Costco futons on the floor of the empty, mortgaged house that we have been trying to sell for two years. But it was also all the green outside and all the water that fed and cooled it and everything that went along with it.

I know I was rude with friends and family who live in Lower Alaska. We arrived at the beginning of Puget Sound's summer, September 1, and left towards its summer's end a couple of weeks later. Locals were excited. They wore shorts and smiles as they sat outside in coffee shops. I complained. I missed the dry heat, open sky and palette of colors that extended beyond green, blue and grey.

The weather is reversed in Lower Alaska. Mornings are clear, cold and damp. A heavy dew settles on everything. About ten or eleven in the morning, it heats up enough to dry out and go out. The day becomes pleasant, then muggy from all the dampness, until the sun begins to set. By five in the afternoon, it's getting chilly. By the time it gets dark, it's time for several layers of clothes. Tucson is the opposite. Mornings and evenings are the precious times to be outside. It's during the day that you stay inside.

Of course, I failed to pack enough clothes. When daily temperatures exceed a hundred degrees, it's hard to think about socks, hats, layers and wool. I brought a hiking pullover sweater made of petroleum and a cotton cardigan and ended up wearing them every day, sometimes both together.

Something has changed in Shari and me. We both talked about it during our two week vacation in Lower Alaska. Nothing in Puget Sound's best stretch of weather for the year made us regret leaving. We were happy to have made the move to Tucson.

We took a long drive down I-5 through Oregon and California. (One could argue that Lower Alaska extends to the Willamette Valley.) We passed through the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, then over Tehachapi to Barstow and through the Mojave Desert. Crossing the Colorado River into Arizona at Parker, we began to see saguaro, cholla and ocatillo, open sky, pink and brown rocks, and dry dirt. It's so stunningly beautiful. We felt at home in the Sonoran Desert.