Morning walk and seasonal updates

I’ve wanted to exercise before work for years and years, but I just can’t do it. I love my bed. I love the warmth. I love sleeping. I love rolling into work at the last second.

But this week I started a new routine of reading on my new Kindle before bed (rather than scrolling Reddit before bed on my phone), going to sleep earlier, and I’ve gone for a morning walk for 3 days in a row!

7am was decently cold this morning. Just 1°C at the airport, maybe a couple degrees warmer in town. Cold enough for a jacket and mittens!

The fog was lying low on town this morning. We have darkness again over night, and amazing northern lights when it is clear. I haven’t done more than peek at them through the bathroom blinds at 2am, because, well, see paragraph 1. I love my warm comfortable bed.

So far I’ve been doing a 30-45 minute walk in the morning, just 2-3’ish kilometres. I think I’d like to do an hour, but I’m also mostly expecting I’ll sleep in tomorrow and end my short streak. Twice I’ve even taken Hank with me. Yesterday Jeff was inspired and he walked Hank before I even woke up!

It’s pretty nice to close my watch’s exercise ring before I even start work! We also walk Hank again at night together, so he’s getting double walks and has no complaints.

I restarted my home exercise program this week too, back to the dumbbells and exercise mat. So expectedly, I groan often, and struggle immensely to get up off a chair right now, and possibly even more to get back sitting again, because I’ve ripped my quads, glutes, abs, lats, etc. in an effort to get them back to where they were. Summer here is just too busy, with so much packed into a short time, I abandoned my home workout routine for a few months to spend more time outside. No regrets, it was a good summer!

I had an appointment with a doctor and nurse from a post-gynaecological-cancer/menopause clinic last week who told me that just walking is incredibly beneficial for bone health after menopause, not just the weight lifting you always hear about. Which is great news, because I love walking the most.

You’ll notice the fall colours creeping in our landscape from these pictures from this morning. I think it’s probably safe to pack away the shorts now.

The border crossing with Alaska on the Top of the World highway closed on Monday, after a super short season. It’s usually open a bit longer, but after a two year Covid closure, who can complain. The Dempster is also closed north of Eagle Plains for emergency bridge repairs right now too, so tourist numbers have drastically dropped off this week. There were just 10 or so trailers in the campground in town this morning when I walked by, and it was easy to get a table inside at Triple J’s last night for wing night. We’ve had a difficult time getting into our restaurants for the last couple of months with all the tourists, plus our establishments are super short staffed this summer. There were days we could only get a table if we wanted to be outside in the rain, but sometimes we’d do the circuit of 3 restaurants before finding a table.

It was great for our businesses to have all these people back, but I imagine everyone is ready for a break. We didn’t even have all our restaurants open this summer and those that were had to close a day a week, and sometimes unexpectedly, when there weren’t enough staff to keep the doors open.

The ice cream store is winding up business for the year this month. Full tubs of Chapman’s ice cream are being sold off for $50 each. Tempting! But then I’d have to walk even more haha.

It is kinda neat to see all the working people stirring during a morning walk. Since I work at home, I don’t experience this part of the day anymore, where people are stopping at the corner store for their coffee, or dropping into the Eldo for their steak and eggs, or into the Riverwest on Front Street for a bagel and coffee before they close up for the season.

The ferry was out of commission for a week in August for repairs, and now it is already running its fall schedule of 7am to 7pm, so anyone who works later than that in the day, needs to arrange their own private boat crossing or paddle a canoe if they live across the river.

Snow is covering the tops of the Tombstone mountain range now. Jeff was up the Dempster yesterday and said there was ice on the puddles!

And time to fess up – I’ve had the heat on in the house several mornings in the last few weeks. Just the oil space heater. We still don’t have all of our firewood yet! It’s going to be another busy month of firewood cutting and stacking. We’re hoping to purchase 4 cords of full length fire killed spruce this week to fill our firewood racks.