Two weeks ago, in the middle of the night, we pulled into Tuktoyaktuk, NWT having done somewhere in the vicinity of 2.5 million paddle strokes. In the picture above, we are enjoying a toast to finishing our expedition.

One week ago, we arrived back home having only adopted one additional adventure pig-Amelia is our new addition-she considers herself to be an explorer pig.

A few hour ago, we shared our first Moo Moo’s ice cream in a year signalling that we were home from all of our grand adventures of the last year.

It’s been a good week of settling back in, wanting for the river, seeing loved ones, telling stories, and unpacking from our last four trips and unpacking the house. Not to mention reclaiming our vegetable garden from the weeds and a bit of blueberry picking. Now, just as I felt like I was finally home,
Delilah and I are off to the Royal Geographic Society International Conference to present some of the work I did while on my sabbatical.

We will both admit that we’ve resisted a wee bit, the process of settling back into regular life. We speak often of the river, sharing spontaneous memories, and wishing we were back there where the only things we really needed to do was sleep, eat, paddle, eat, paddle, eat, sleep, and repeat. But as I often say, you can’t stay on the summit forever.

What a grand adventure and so glad to share it with my dear co-adventurer Marian. I’ll be missing her sometime fierce this week as we’ve only been apart one eight hour period in the past year. Only six sleeps until we adventure together again, albeit the adventure of settling back into our everyday.