We have returned from travels to France, Greece, and Canada, only to find that the fire season continues and air quality is getting bad. When we returned yesterday from Canada, the air was hazy but did not smell. Today, the air is much hazier, smoky looking, and there is a clear scent of burnt wood in the air. An odd thing we noticed that that there were air quality alerts for metropolitan Seattle but no such alerts for metropolitan Vancouver (BC) - yet the air quality seemed about the same. I conclude that Canadian authorities have lax requirements, either for air quality or for reporting of air quality.
We flew to France via Amsterdam. I masked the entire trip as I was spending time in a small aluminum tube with a couple hundred strangers. It only takes one or two hoseheads to make an entire airplane sick (I debated using a different phrase, a more sympathetic tag, but I cannot imagine why an intelligent person knowingly ill or feeling ill with COVID symptoms would intentionally travel on an airplane, but I digress). We staved off some jet lag by wandering around Nantes (FR) and settled on a small crepe restaurant for dinner. The next day or so, we picked up a car at the airport and headed out for some tourism. There were three prongs to our travels: Puy du Fou, Cognac, and cave paintings. I will give particulars later; for now, it was a great leg of the trip.
For the second leg, we were in Nantes and environs as members of the "delegation" from the Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association (SNSCA). Originally scheduled for 2020, the trip was to celebrate the 40th anniversity of the twinning of Seattle and Nantes. COVID changed the world, so the 40th became the 41st and then the 42nd anniversary. With any luck, the 45th anniversary will be celebrated in 2025.
For the third leg, we flew to Greece to go sailing. We met up with six friends to sail a 48-foot catamaran among the Saronic islands, including Ydra (Hydra) and Poros.
Shortly after returning home, we went to the cabin in Canada to do the annual burn. This was to be for the Canadian Thanksgiving, a long weekend (3-day) in October that is the traditional weekend when the holiday is celebrated and the cabins are closed down for the winter. The winter rains have usually settled in by now, making it safe to burn the accumulated prunings and tree cuttings down on the beach. This year, we are in a continuing drought and the days remain clear and warm. The burn ban remains in place, so we hope to return in mid-November to burn. We could wait until Spring for the burn, but that gives the brush piles a lot of time to build up thick growths of mold and mildew that will give my sinus passages a rough ride. We have burned in the Spring in the past, and it was no fun.
Now back at home and looking forward to the rains and the end of the fire season.
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