Melting

I didn't do too much today. I woke up late, played guitar and listened to some music for while - I'm continuing to explore country a little, and I've actually created a playlist of some songs I really like. I still can't belive it.

I met Mom for lunch at about noon. We went to a cool restaurant called "Our Place" right in downtown Yellowknife. They make a fantastic cream of mushroom soup and a pretty good ceaser salad.

I noticed while I was walking to and from lunch that things are really melting here. It only got up to about 10 degrees, but there was a steady stream of water running down both sides of our little street, and the puddle behind the appartment was HUGE. There were about 4 inches of water... and there's no way around it. I had to walk through it a couple of time. It's weird though, because it always recedes during the night, and then by lunch time it's filled right up again. It's nice though, because it means the snow is leaving, and warmer weather is coming right away. It's really amazing how much it's warmed up here just since I arrived. It hasn't been anywhere near the -20 it was when I landed that first evening! And I'm very happy about that...

Watching the Sunset

We just went out this evening to watch the sunset from Pilot's Monument. The view was amazing, as you can see in the pictures below, and the light across the whole city was beautiful. I was able to test out the incredible zoom on my camera too, as evidenced by the shots of the birds, and the close ups of the sun. Very cool. See photos below.

Pictures - April 28th, 2008

Another shot showing the Great Slave melting. It was amazing because even compared to yesterday, the ice look softer, and it was easier to see that there is in fact water beneath all that ice!

Close-up of a seagull. Mom said this is the first time she's seen them here, so they may have just returned from more southerly places.

Me and Mommy!

Mommey and Me!

Bison Hunting... No Bison :(

We got up fairly early for me this morning (about 9:00) and headed off down highway three to see if we could find some bison. It's the same highway that you can take all the way south to Edmonton, when either the ice road is open, or the ferry is running, - See it in Google Earth here - neither of which is happening right now. This means that the only way to get north of the MacKenzie River right now is to fly. Anyway, we drove about 150km down the highway, and we saw lots and lots of bison poop, and a few bison signs, that would give the impression of there being lots of the animals around, but we didn't see one bison the whole trip!

We did come across a pond where the water had emptied out somehow after there were four inches of ice on top. The ice wasn't able to support itself and collapsed, splitting into huge chunks, and it all came down just as it was. Some of the pieces were left behind in trees! (See pictures below, in previous post). It was amazing, and totally worth the trip!

We stopped at a small Territorial Park to have lunch - See it in Google Earth here - it was a funny little picnic park, but according to the sign camping was permitted if one so desired. It was right on the shores of the Great Slave Lake, and there was even an ice road heading off across the lake. I have no idea where it went.

The NWT landscape is almost desert like, even at this time of year - the climat is semi arid, and it looks it. There is a lot of rock and scraggly little tufts of grass, the trees are all sort of stunted and short, but at the same time there is a beauty to the countryside of a type I have never before seen. I'll post a picture of what I'm talking about in the next pictures post.

I spent the rest of the afternoon listening to music; mostly country, which I've started listening to a bit thanks to Lara ;) I've been amazed to find that now that I've given the genre a bit of a chance, I'm actually enjoying quite a few of the songs! I would never have thought I would come to enjoy country...

In the evening we went back up to Pilot's Monument - See it in Google Earth here - to try to get some pictures of the sunset. Unfortunately there was a large bank of clouds and by the time we got up to the monument the sun had alread 'set' behind it. There are some pictures below, the colours were nice.

-- Check out the links section on the left for a Google Earth file that I'll keep updating with all the 'Places of Interest' I make note of in my posts! To open, click on the link, then on "open", it will open it right into Google Earth and take you to the spot! --

Pictures - April 27th 2008

The breaking ice. Notice the slab stuck up in the trees.


Mom at Pilot's Monument


Sort-of sunset from Pilot's Monumnet


I'm going to take a picture sort of like this every once in a while to show the melting of the ice on the lake. This was yesterday.


Downtown Yellowknife


This enormous sign would seem to indicate that bison are everywhere...


An ice road heading off across the Great Slave Lake


This is the broken ice we saw just on the side of the highway.


Mom beside the ice. Gives an idea of how big the chunks were.

...A more in-depth description will follow shortly. I'm off to watch a sunset for now!

Pictures - April 24-26, 2008

And so it begins

I've decided to start blogging again. It's been a couple of years since this, and now that I'm spending this summer away from home in Yellowknife, it seems like time to record some more of my life and feelings. I'll start the story from the sort-of beginning...

Thursday April 24, 2008

I left home at aobut 5:30am, left Halifax Airport at 7:40. Westjet had run out of aisle seats, and I ended up in a middle seat between a large man and another tall man. By the time we arrived in Calgary five hours and twenty minutes later I was literally in pain. Calgary aiport was not very interesting. I was only there for about an hour, but unfortunately it was foggy and cloudy so I couldn't see anything of the city or the mountains - which I've heard is possible to see from the airport. All well.

Funny little bit of trivia: the 1919 Calgary Stampede had a pilot and plane, and for twenty dollars one could go for an airplane ride. After the event the pilot decided to take his two sons up for a minute. Shortly after takeoff there was a problem and the engine stopped. The pilot ended up landing the plane on top of a carousel; the other options were apparently less desirable.

After a very short flight to Edmonton I picked up my bags, met up with Lara and we headed off to the West Edmonton Mall.

It was sooooooooo nice to see Lara and to spend the afternoon with her. Amazing.

The mall itself was cool and very large! It was neat to be just walking along in the mall and then all of a sudden your standing in front of a skating rink! Or a dragon! or a sealion! or a Ferrari! or a pirate ship! or a wave pool! or the world's largest indoor triple loop rollercoaster (which is really loud, and really really fun for anyone brave enough to try it - although I did almost black out ofter the first loop...decided to pay more attention and make sure I breathed through the rest of the ride!).

I got back to the Edmonton Airport, ran in (thinking I was just in time for boarding), only to find out that the flight had been delayed from 8:10 to about 11:30. Unfortunately Lara had already left, so I had to just hang around the airport for awhile. I just got to Tim's before they closed. Whew! By this time I was getting tired, I found myself some seats, and did some reading, staring out the window, chatting with another passenger who was also just hanging around etc. The plane eventually did arrive, and they got it ready to go, I think, in record time. We got off the ground at around 11:40.

Friday April 25, 2008

The plane arrived in Yellowknife on a -20 degree morning, at 1:40am. -20 is very cold.

About 2 minutes after leaving the airport mom and I spotted some northern lights, so we drove out of the city a little and stopped on the side of the road to take a look. Very cool gray/green swatches of colour floated and morphed above us, at one point they got very bright. Behind them the cloudless night displayed a crystal clear starscape, and silouetted against the lights were some very typical northern trees. It was totally the 'northern experience', like something out of a Yellowknife postcard. Incredible.

We spent the day - after a few hours of sleep - driving around and checking out the town. We had poutine at A&W (much better than Chez Ashton in Quebec), which we ended up have to take out because of a fire alarm that start to sound... it didn't seem to bother anyone else, but a fire truck went by us shortly after we left... headed in that direction. hehe. I got some really cool native-ish leather slippers from a crazy general store that sells all kinds of amazing winter gear and shoes and whatnot. Mom's appartment is in the basement of a house, so the floor is really cold. The slippers keep me warm :)

We made our way to the Diavik head office (where Mom works) to make a copy of the photo ID they want. I also met Pat McCloskey (Mom's cousin's husband, head of security for Diavik), and the President of the company (Mom's Boss). We had diner with both of them later at Corliss' which was wonderful.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

I spent a lot of saturday listening to music and just relaxing. We did go out of a couple of times - once to check out the couple of malls downtown and to pick up a couple of minor things. We then went out again because I decided to see if I could find a new camera... I forgot (true story) my old one at Aunt Mary's the day before I left. I bought a Canon PowerShot S5 IS in the end. A very nice 8MP, 12X zoom digicam, which is very nice. The rest of the day was dedicated to playing with the camera (it has full manual control, which takes a bit of time to figure out, as well as full auto), playing Carcassonne with Mom, and then chatting with friends etc. on MSN.

Pics to follow...