Northwest passage 4 Kugluktualak (Port Epworth,) Tuesday September 2, 2025

Another gorgeous day

1:00 or should I say 13:00 because that’s ship’s time

I’m finding it hard to even start to describe how fantastic the morning was, except for the fact that we had to board the zodiacs at 7:00. Luckily our colour group was second last so we got a wee bit of extra time.

When I got out of the zodiac and began to make my way up to the stromatolites*,

People looking at the stromatolites

I felt completely relaxed, in a way I haven’t done for a long time. It is such a privilege to be here and to be able to walk on this land. For me, even though I’m a city kid, it’s like coming home after a long absence. The temperature was about +2C and there was a bit of a wind but my rain gear kept me nice and warm. Despite my recent haircut which is maybe a bit shorter than she’s been cutting it lately, I didn’t need my toque, only the ear band, made from musk ox wool, that I bought last year in Greenland. I needed my right hand for my camera and cell phone so I put a very warm glove on my left hand and managed just fine.

The first thing that caught my eye were some waterbirds. My first thought was cormorants but I checked with one of the bird folks and cormorants aren’t found in this area. Her guess was either loons or pintails. She was hoping that some one who was close to the birds on shore got a photo so she could confirm what they were.[They were pintails.]

Pintails

The area of the hike today was made up of a series of terraces that gradually rose from the beach. The stromatolites were visible at several different elevations with the most spectacular collection of them on the second highest terrace.

Stromatolites

The first interpretive station I came to was the burial place for two Mounties who were killed by an Inuit man in the 1920’s. Word came to the RCMP that two men had been murdered so they went to find out what had happened. Two men Tatamigana and Alikomiak admitted to the killings. In their minds they were justified and had done nothing wrong. [In a CBC account, the men were told by the elders of the community to kill a man who was threatening the community and they complied. I didn’t hear David Pelly https://www.davidpelly.com/   give this piece of information although he may have done so.] The Mounties tried to explain to them that that wasn’t the way settler’s justice worked and took them into custody.

There was no jail house so the two prisoners simply lived with the Mounties waiting for a judge to come up from Edmonton in the spring to decide their case. In the meantime the prisoners worked for the Mounties doing household chores. One day one of the Inuit men killed the Mountie because he was being made to do women’s work which was an insult to him. When the second Mountie found that his comrade had been killed, the killer shot him too. After this the men didn’t run or try to cover up what they had done. They waited at the RCMP post to see what would happen. What happened was they were arrested a second time and a judge was sent out from Edmonton to try their case. Interestingly enough, the judge brought with him the lumber to build a gallows. In a very short trial, the judge found the two men guilty and they were hanged. They were the only two Inuit ever executed in Canada. I don’t know where those two were buried but the Mounties were buried in a small plot of grass and soil overlooking the beach at Port Epworth or Kogluktualuk, to give the place its Inuit name.

Mounties' graves

While a group of us was listening to the story, one of the bear guards called to us that there was a ground squirrel fairly close to the cemetery. Of course, I went right over to have a look and ended up spending about half an hour watching and photographing it.

Well camouflaged Arctic ground squirrel 

Let me tell you this ground squirrel looked nothing like the Richardson’s ground squirrels we see around home. He was about the size of a house cat and I watched him as he ate, looked around and groomed himself. Of course I was taking photos Ike crazy and enjoying every minute of it. I don’t think any of them will be especially stunning, but I hope to have captured something of what a ground squirrel’s day looks like. I think I watched him for about 30 minutes and then decided to move on up the terraces stopping often to take photos of the tiny plants that cover the land.

As I climbed higher, the smoke from the fire near Yellowknife blew in and began to cast a haze over the land. Despite the smoke, I felt exhilarated. The terrain was just steep enough to give me a good workout and the the need to watch my footing kept my mind engaged as I searched for the best route through the rock bands, the willows, and the boggy bits. When I reached the biggest collection of stromatolites, I stood for a moment in awe of the fact that the rings in the rock caused by tiny microorganisms are the reason we have an atmosphere with enough oxygen to live. As they piled up layer, upon layer, rather like coral, they gave off oxygen gradually changing the composition of the atmosphere and paving the way for a different set of creatures to come into being and, eventually, creating an atmosphere in which we can exist. It might seem silly, but as I turned to go back down to the beach I thanked those small organisms for the perfectly wonderful day that was mine to enjoy.

The wind picked up quite a bit during the morning and by the time we got back to the ship the zodiac was rocking and rolling. Rather than having two people on the platform to help us get aboard, there were an additional three at various points on the stairs, each offering an arm for the sailor’s grip to get us safely aboard.

Before lunch I went through some of my photos. I have managed to take 300 in the last 3 days. It’s going to require some strategic planning to be able to carve out time to write these blogs and edit photos on the fly so this afternoon I skipped the talk about geology in order to write this. When it comes right down to it, I’m much more interested in critters than I am in rocks.

21:54

We spent a lot of time this afternoon in the Nautilus Lounge listening. First there was the traditional Inuit welcome, which is always lovely with the lighting of the quilliq, and the introduction of the Inuit staff. There are 9 of them this year and Aleqa Hammond, former Prime Minister of Greenland, pointed out that there are only 100,000 Inuit in total and they live in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Denmark and Russia.

Inuit welcome

Tending the quilliq

After the welcome there was some free time and I went out on deck with my tea to get a photo for Tea on the Deck for September.

Tea on the deck

There was quite a bit of ‘shipkeeping’ to take care of and after that we had a briefing about our landing in Cambridge Bay. Then came the captian’s welcome and the introduction of his heads of department. I’m so glad we have Captain Dominic again this year. He has been sailing for 30 years and he knows a lot about Arctic Ice having started his career on container ships in the Arctic before moving to cruise ships and then to expedition ships. His bridge tour last year was one of the highlights and he has a great sense of humour. When he introduced himself he said he was from a small country and a tiny city. The country? India. The city? Mumbai. Even though I had heard the joke last year I laughed again as he delivered it with such delight.

Captain Domenic and his officers

A change from all of the other years except for the first one after Covid, is that it seems we will have a buffet for all three meals instead of just breakfast and lunch. [We had a couple of buffet suppers, mainly when we were going to be staggered coming back from a landing, otherwise we had table service.] Another change that directly affects the quality of my life is that they no longer stock 0% beer. I’ll probably end up drinking way more diet pop than I should. At home I drink water but I like it ice cold and struggle to drink enough if it isn’t that temperature. I know: suck it up buttercup and get on with your life. I’ve put a coupe of bottles of water in the fridge in the hope that that will encourage me.

After supper tonight there was live music by Ethan and Chris. Chris mentioned that he considered everyone onboard a musical family and if there were any people out there who played or sang we should let him know. I waltzed right up at the end and told him I was a singer and that I play ukulele. He said he would let me know the next time there was going to be a music night and I could do a couple of songs. I said I would. Thanks to the uke jam once a week since January for giving me the confidence to put myself out there in situations like this. I’ll let you know how it goes.

And that’s it for tonight. We don’t have to get going quite so early tomorrow but I still want to get to bed. The CPAP and I have been disagreeing every night so I haven’t been sleeping as well as I would like.

September 22, 2025

Now that I have internet access I can fill out some of the info.

*Stromatolites ‘a calcareous mound built up of lime-secreting cyanobacteria and trapped sediment found in Precambrian rock. They are the earliest known fossils.’ thank you Google

Northwest passage 3, Monday September 1, 2025 Kugluktuk

Kugluktuk on a bright sunny day

That was a pretty full day and the beginning of it seems like it was ages ago. We were up at 6 in order to get ourselves ready and get some of the continental breakfast. I’m going to be eating breakfast on this trip which I don’t usually do but it’s the best time to be able to get a good amount of beans and grains. Unfortunately this morning, there weren’t any of those on offer, scones, and other floury things with jam, honey or marmalade. I was hoping for some peanut butter but there was none to be had.

The sky was almost clear today so there was actually sun that we could see. We boarded buses that took us to the airport. They were of the school, made-for-small-children variety, and I ended up sitting over a wheel with my pack on my lap.

Crammed onto a school bus

I couldn’t see ahead but I could see out the side window and I took full advantage of that. We were on the second of three flights, and much to my surprise, we didn’t have to go through security. One of the people on staff who is doing a bird count from the ship, explained that if you go south you need to go through security but if you are going within the territory or between territories you don’t have to.

Our plane was an Avro RJ85 -RJ100. I don’t know if ours was RJ 85 or RJ 100. I just copied the info off the safety card in the seat pocket. I was on the aisle and, much like the flight to Yellowknife, I couldn’t see out a window. It was a short flight just over an hour and they served us a ham and cheese sandwich, with carrots and cherry tomatoes on the side, some sort of cake/ pie, and an orange which was very good. The veggies were fresh too. Then they came around with Oreos or Cheezies for a snack. I thought it a bit odd to have a snack right after lunch but I went along with it.

In Kugluktuk we boarded buses that took us to the recreation complex. In the hockey arena side there were people selling handicrafts. Some were very nice but I’m not really in the market for any more Inuit crafts unless the are drop dead spectacular. We went to the museum which was small and were welcomed by a diminutive woman who told us her name was Nancy. She had traditional chin tattoos and crinkles at the corners of her eyes.

There was a taxidermied golden eagle right out in the middle of the room, not behind glass or anything. I knew eagles were big but there’s something very sobering about standing beside one that comes up to your waist.

Stuffed eagle

There were also several kayaks. That’s not the Inuit which I should have written down and didn’t. One was a model made of skin; one looked like it was covered by treated canvas, and the third one, which was full size, was also covered in skin.

Kayak skin-covered I think

We got into a conversation with another one of the passengers who is a model-boat builder. He has built a model of the Erebus partially based on a video clip taken by someone on the Adventure Canada trip the year they got to visit the dive platform. He knows a lot about historic ships of the Arctic and it will be interesting to talk to him again at some point.

Next on the agenda was a presentation at the rec centre. I can only describe it as a concert with singing and drumming. One of the younger women explained that she and a number of others in her age group sat down with the elders to learn the traditional songs because they were dying out. I can’t remember off hand how many took part in the performance. There was an elder man, a teenaged boy, and a line of women. In the past I’ve mostly seen the men drumming but the women also took turns with the drum.

Detail on her amauti

Elder woman drumming

Photo by Michael Winsor

The singing is what I’d describe as speak singing and the interplay of the voices and the drum was really interesting. At times the beat of the drum seemed to match the singing and at other times it seemed, to my ear, to be off but my ear has had very little practice listening to this type of music. The concert lasted for about an hour with various people taking turns with the drum. Sometimes there were others besides the drummer dancing. One of the woman played the drum and danced with her child in her amauti.  The child wasn’t a tiny baby either and I admired her stamina.

Woman with baby dancing and drumming

I forgot to mention that they also offered us caribou soup which was very tasty and a kind of fried bread. It wasn’t bannock, at least the kind I have had before. They also had cookies and fresh fruit, cantaloupe, grapes, pineapple, and apple sections. The fruit was very fresh and a nice accompaniment to the soup and bread.

Women singing

caribou soup and bannock

We found a little corner from where we could stand and watch the performance. There were a couple of Inuit women sitting in front of us and one offered me her seat. I explained that I would rather stand so I could take photos. At the end I thanked her and she told me that she was teaching Inutitut to students from grade 9 to 12. She said she had started teaching them in kindergarten, then in elementary school, and now in high school. In this was young people are learning their traditional language. As we left she smiled and wished us a safe journey.

It was a short walk to the beach where the zodiacs cued up to take us to the ship. We hung back because we didn’t want to be in the crush trying to get on the first few boats. Everyone was going to get picked up eventually so why worry about it? We got into our splash pants, jackets, gloves, and toques before we left the building and were among the last on the beach. Richard found a life jacket and someone brought one over to me. They are a different style than we’ve had in the past and it took a few minutes for Richard to get his so it was fitting properly.

We weren’t the last zodiac. There were probably two more behind us. John Houston was our driver and we had a bit of trouble getting the boat off the bottom. John gunned the engine and when that didn’t work the helpers on shore pushed and we moved from the shore side pontoon into the centre of the boat in order to get it launched. One of the guys made a joke that John was a great driver and usually got 75% of his passengers safely to the ship. We all laughed appropriately. John said that we were the drama boat.

Our zodiac's not going anywhere

When we had covered about a third of the distance, the engine coughed and died. John swapped out the empty fuel tank for a full one but still couldn’t get the motor started. He then tried to bleed some of the air out of the line but the thing still refused to start. In the meantime, three other zodiacs had come over to offer assistance. With the third offer John and the other driver decided to transfer us to the other boat.

The suggested method for this was to sit on the pontoon of our zodiac, put one leg into the other zodiac, and then kind of flip yourself into the other boat. I ended up needing quite a tug to get me from one boat to the other. Some people chose to go between boats on hands and knees and I think that would have been easier. Despite the lack of graceful manoeuvring, we all made it into the rescue boat leaving John and one of the seaman to wrestle with the offending motor. I saw John on board later so they must have persuaded the engine to start.

Before we could embark we had an ‘abandon ship’ drill. This time we didn’t actually have to put on the lifejackets which saved quite a bit of time. Then we had a briefing, and a boot fitting. Both Richard and I ended up in smaller sized boots this time. Not sure why but the smaller sized seemed to work better.

New this year was the biosecurity protocol. We took packs, boots, and any clothing that might harbour seeds to a designated spot where they were examined and vacuumed. We were cautioned to be very aware of Velcro or mesh and to check it each time we came back to the ships. We also had the soles of our boots scrubbed with some sort of disinfectant. After that it was time for supper. Tonight was a buffet but most nights you order off the menu.

After supper we spent some time in the Meridian Club on the uppermost deck watching the scenery go by and chatting with others. At breakfast we met Ursula who is from Cologne Germany. She says she only has high school English but her English is about 100 times better than my high school German! She said that the people on the mic spoke too fast for her to catch much. We offered to help her whenever she needed it. She had some questions at supper and Richard helped her with the schedule for tomorrow. Later Alana, the host, came by our table and said that there were three other people from Germany on the tour and that two of the AC staff spoke fluent German. She was going to introduce Ursula to the other German speakers. I’m sure we’ll check in with Ursula fairly often. She’s lively and cheerful and has a great sense of humour. I wouldn’t do nearly as well if you plunked me down into the middle of a ship of German speakers.

The last thing of importance today, and one of the highlights, was connecting with friends from previous expeditions. We met Robert Comeau very briefly at the airport in Kugluktuk. He was coming off the ship and heading home. He said we were in for a great trip. Even though we only saw him for a minute or two it was great to meet him in person after keeping track of him via Facebook for the last few years. Jon and Julie are assistant expedition leaders so we will have more time to catch up with them. Derek, Darrell, Liz, Marissa, and Chris are all members of the team we know from previous trips.

Julie told me part of the story of our thwarted Into the Northwest Passage trip that I didn’t know about before. I’ll relate that in another post. I’m done for the night. It’s been a long full day and we have to be up at 6 to hit the zodiacs at 7 tomorrow morning. My CPAP mask has not been co-operating so I hope I get a better sleep tonight. I had one really good night’s sleep with it at home and, foolishly, thought I had the problem solved. Apparently I don’t.

Northwest passage 2B: Yellowknife museum August 31, 2025

 During our free time before the briefing, we spent some time in the museum. It was very interesting. I like small museums that don't feel like they will take you days, weeks or months to see.  

Just inside the museum entrance

NWT is very important in terms of minerals

labels running to all parts of the computer  showing which minerals are used and where they are mined

My reflection meets the lemmings. I would like to have seen a live one but didn't.

I didn't know this information about how muskrats winter.

The closest we got to a muskox, probably just as well.

Interesting information about birch and spruce in making drums.

Constructing and riding in this boat was part of the Nahanni River of Forgiveness Project. There is an NFB film called The Last Moose skin boat that follows the project from start to finish.

This is not your tiny canoe!

Most of the construction is done by lashing one part to another.

Bow detail

Thwart detail

Looking along the length of the boat.

De Haviland Fox Moth constructed from 3 separate wrecks. These bush planes were the workhorses of the north from the 1030's to the 1950's

In 1949 at the height of commercial fishing on Great  Slave Lake there were 14 fishing companies with processing plants in Hay River. The total catch for 1949 was 9 million pounds! That was the largest catch ever in a single season. In 1951 500 commercial licenses were issued and Great Slave Lake provided the largest trout and whitefish fishery in North America. Much of the catch went to New York so supply Kosher delis. 

Northwest passage 2A: photos from a walk in Yellowknife

 When I do my regular blogs I select photos to go with the writing, but I have photos left over and I've decided to do some of these photo pages when I have other photos I want to share. In this case I was struck by the variety and amount of public art I saw during our very brief walks.

NWT legislature building

My first encounter with the 'red dress' sculpture outside the legislature.

Sculpture from the side

Sculpture from the back

Drum dancers sculpture across from the legislature

There were many of these benches along the walking paths

Musk ox decorated in flowers

Northwest Passage 2, Yellowknife, Saturday August 31, 2025

Smoky sunset in Yellowknife

Yellowknife. It’s even smokier today than it was yesterday. I’m glad we had a walk to the legislature, and the museum while the smoke briefly cleared because I don’t think we will be walking far today. We’ll go out for brunch in a little while and will probably make it as far as the museum. It was closed last night when we went there. Then I think we’ll hang around the hotel room and entertain ourselves until it’s time for the meet and greet. If we decide to go out for supper we’ll venture out again.

It’s odd how much the light affects my opinion of a place. I noticed that gorgeous northern light from the bit I could see out the window of the plane yesterday. When I think of Whitehorse or Kingait, I think of that same crystal light. It’s a signal to me that I have come to a place that I love. Today the world is grey, not the grey that you get in Vancouver in the winter but the grey of wildfire smoke which I know well. At home when it’s smoky like this, the sun often shines through with an angry orange glare. Here there is no glare, just a kind of dirty mist. It’s as if there is no horizon and the world simply drops off. It’s kind of eerie and instead of the comfort I generally feel when in the north I feel unsettled. That’s not Yellowknife’s fault but I think my memory of this place will always be tinged with a bit of unease.

4:56 pm

We have picked up our jackets, our bus tickets, and our name tags. We will be in room 4038 where we have stayed before. We are on the second flight tomorrow and I’m glad we had a chance to catch up on some sleep last night because we need to be finished breakfast, and be in the lobby at 7:45. We’ll get the scoop at the briefing later but rumour has it that we will need to have our checked luggage out in the hallway at 5:00 a.m. That means we’ll be putting it in the corridor tonight.

I’m really excited but also a bit sad because this will probably be our last trip with Adventure Canada. We first travelled with them 10 years ago when they chartered the Ocean Endeavour for the first time and we thought we’d do a ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to celebrate our 30th anniversary a year early. Well, here we are moving toward our 40th anniversary and we were figuring out that this is my 10th trip with Adventure Canada and Richard’s 9th. As Richard, quite rightly, points out, there are other places to see. I will miss the familiarity of these trips because of the people, the ship, and the routines. I will miss thinking about what to pack over the winter when the dailiness of things seems unending at times. Now, I’m putting those thoughts away for another time after we get home. Three people on the staff greeted us with huge smiles and one person told us how good it was to see familiar faces among the sea of new ones.

We ate with Jean, a friendly and interesting woman from Saskatchewan. This will be her first trip with AC and we were able to give her our perspective on a few things. We also met the woman who sat beside us on the plane yesterday, and a man who talked to us on the shuttle bus from the airport.

We did go back to Rickie’s for lunch. Richard had an omelette and I had breakfast burritos. There were a lot of potatoes in the burritos, and while I love potatoes, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

We walked with Jean over the the museum and spent a couple of hours there. It was really interesting and just big enough that we didn’t feel rushed and saw everything that we wanted to see. I was glad of the notebook Craig gave me for my birthday. There are some things I want to make notes on rather than just photographing the information. It’s the old thing about the ideas passing through my brain and hand onto the paper that makes it easier for me to remember the significance of something. I’ll probably do a separate post on the museum but these initial ones are about getting underway. And speaking of that, I think I’ll head back down and see if I can spot anymore familiar faces. People watching is always fun. More after the briefing.

10:01 p.m.

I made very bad choices of food today. I’ve mentioned lunch already and for dinner I ordered a Thai salad which came advertised as noodles with vegetables. There were a couple of grated carrot bits, some cilantro, and some hot peppers. I’m hard pressed to say that there were vegetables in it, and we ate in the hotel because we thought it would be more expedient. Turns out the dining room and the bar both have the same kitchen and the service was slow. They were overwhelmed with the AC folks and there were only two guys in the bar, where we ate, both doing the drinks and waiting tables. The meal was expensive and we could have been to Rickie’s and back in the time it took in house. Oh well. Sometimes your decisions work out really well and sometimes they don’t.

The reason we wanted to get supper done smartly was that we either had to have our checked luggage down to the holding room before 9p.m. Or before 5:00 a.m. You can guess which one we chose. We are on the second flight but the first shuttle bus so we have to be in the lobby with our carry on at 7:45.

Chris Dolder our expedition leader spoke to me as I was wandering around with a cup of tea. He said I Iooked like I had been on these expeditions before. I said I had and we had a good chat. Turns out that he was on the infamous Into the NWP where we didn’t make it and spent an extra day on the ship trying to figure out where we could go so we could be extracted by plane. We met the photographer who is from NL and I saw a couple more of the staff who were on the trip last year as well as other years.

It is supposed to be a high of +2C in Kugluktuk tomorrow so we have our gloves, toques, and insulation layers in our carryon luggage. I tightened the straps on my duffle quite a bit now that two of my sweaters are out.

I’m calling that a wrap for today. I need to have a shower and then get things all laid out for the morning which will come very early. I’m glad we had a chance for a good sleep-in today.

Northwest passage 1 Saturday August 30, 2025

It’s 3:40 in the afternoon and we’re ensconced in the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife. All systems seem to be working. I’m going to try to put photos into this Pages document which might be an absolute nightmare when I try to put it into the blog but we shall see.

Front entrance of the hotel

Smoky sun reflected in hotel window

We didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, me because I was writing the last blog entry. Betty picked us up at 8:30 and we had a lovely drive to the airport along the back roads. We normally just hit Stoney Trail and blast through. We had no trouble getting through security except that Richard got randomly chosen to have his baggage searched. I took out my tablet and sent it through with my vest and my phone but they didn’t seem too fussed about it.

We discovered something vital about the 737-800’s: don’t pick 9A or 9B because you get a lovely bulkhead where other people have windows. I began the flight looking across the aisle out the window on the other side which, seemed to disconcert the woman sitting beside me in the aisle seat. Tough beans. Then the guy in the window seat across the aisle pulled down the shade. Rats! I discovered that if I leaned forward and twisted a bit I could see out a little sliver of window of the guy in front. That is until he decided to pull down the shade. I listened to my audio book until the woman beside me decided to go to the washroom. I thought that was a great idea since I had a large cup of tea, a Diet Coke (yes I know it’s bad for me and that Coke isn’t a nice company), and about half of my 600 ml cup of water. I followed her down the aisle but she made it back before I did so I still had to disturb her.

Trying to get a look outside

We had our snacks and more to drink and then it was Richard’s turn to wander down the aisle. I seized the opportunity to shift his stuff to the middle seat and I moved to the ‘window’ seat. By turning to the side I was able to see out a bit of the window behind me. I read all kinds of things on the engine of the plane that I didn’t know were there before. I found out where the oil goes into the engine and that you’re not supposed to stand close to the engine when it’s running.

Reading material on the engine

I also got to see the panel over the side of the engine slide back when we landed and the pilot turned on the reverse thrusters. At least I think that’s what happened,

Reverse thrusters engaged, I think

As far as seeing the terrain, I didn’t see much of that. I did get a glimpse of the ground as we started our descent and noted that there were a lot of lakes down there. As we got closer to Yellowknife the visibility became less and less and I could tell by the colour of the sun on the wing that we were looking through forest fire smoke. I didn’t see the ground until we were very close to it and by then I could smell the smoke. Not my favourite thing but I did think to bring some masks.

The shuttle to the hotels was packed with people and luggage. We were the last on and the guy beside Richard was also on the Northwest Passage trip, as were the couple ahead of me. There was one woman who looked really familiar but she didn’t acknowledge me when I tried to make eye contact. We’ll see if she ends up on the ship.

We got to the hotel and checked in and then headed out for some lunch. At the little donair place the couple at the next table said they were with Road Scholar but that’s a subset of the Adventure Canada trip so we will be seeing them again. They are from the States. I had to really ride herd on my outside voice that wanted to say, ‘I’m so sorry for you.’ When they said they would recommend Road Scholar’s trip to Africa I was thinking, ‘That’s not happening anytime soon.’

It is really windy here and it would be nice if the wind could clear some of the smoke. I fear, however, that it is just blowing more of it in. This landscape seems to be much more rocky and rugged than Whitehorse and with the wind and the smoke it has an intensity all of its own.

Smoke from our hotel room

On our way back from lunch I got all of my souvenir shopping done. I’m quite pleased with that. I wanted a t-shirt from Yellowknife and a couple of stickers. Now we can spend tomorrow wandering around seeing the sights without my having to worry about shopping.

I realize that this would be one of those times when it would be good if my phone and my tablet spoke the same language. It might be tricky trying to get the android to talk to the iPad. Oh well, I guess I’ll keep notes of which photos I want to go with which post so I can put them in when I get home.

We’re not going to eat at the hotel tonight. It’s expensive and we found a little grill that will do just fine. We will be eating ‘hotel food’ for the next two plus weeks and, while the food on the ship is good, there’s no need to start the process early.

That’s it for now. I might add to this tonight or I might not.