The day after the lifts closed for the season, Mr. Karen and I went down to the village and cleaned out our ski locker. We drove back home, unloaded the skis and poles and boots and such, then loaded up our luggage and left town. We left late enough in the day that we completely missed Seattle rush hour, which was good. It was also late enough that we stopped several hours short of our destination, staying in a motel off the freeway that I thought had particularly flattering light in the bathroom … enough so that I took a selfie after we got in. The tie-dye tee I’m wearing is one of my mom’s that I kept when my brother and I cleaned out her house. She didn’t get to travel all that much; somehow wearing her clothes when I go places makes me feel like a part of her is getting to come with me on these trips.

The next day, we headed up to Canada, with Vancouver our ultimate destination. Along the way we stopped for Indian food and a bit of shopping (which we had to do because the Indian restaurant wasn’t open quite yet). I was surprised to see palm trees in that town; short squat ones but palm trees nonetheless. We had less traffic on the way to Vancouver than we allowed for, so we had a bit of time to walk around and look at the architecture. There were a few skyscrapers that messed with my sense of what angles and lines are appropriate, like the one with the sharp pop out in the middle of its rounded lines in the background below, behind the theater where we saw the Genesis tribute band Mr. K is a fan of (the reason for our trip up to Vancouver).

After the show in Vancouver, we drove to Kaye’s house (Mr. Karen’s oldest sister), tiptoeing in so as not to wake them with our late arrival. We spent the next two days with Mr. K’s mom, meeting some of the aides that she now has with her part of the day to help her with taking her meds and other daily living activities.

Then it was off to Portland to see Kansas on their Point of Know Return anniversary tour. As is our wont, we arrived with not quite enough time to make it to the pre-show dinner with fellow fans, so I dropped Mr. K off at the restaurant before going to check in to our hotel and park the car. We made it to the concert itself with plenty of time to spare.

We woke up the next morning and had a late breakfast huddled under the awning of a food truck to stay out of the rain, then it was off to Seattle to see Kansas again (we never know when they might decide to stop touring, after all). I enjoyed the architecture on our walk to and from the theater, including this colorful building reflected in a more standard one.

On our way home, we took one detour to IKEA to get more shelves for the cabinet we’d gotten last time, and another detour to see Dry Falls, a stunning artifact of the Ice Age floods that scoured this part of the country.

We got home to a few inches of fresh snow in the driveway, because that’s spring in the mountains in northern Idaho.