Road Trip - Yellowknife Arrival

On Day 11 of our road trip, it was somewhat of a relief to hear the dulcet tones of the lovely British voice (we haven't changed the voice since we last used it in Europe) on our SatNav announce "You have arrived at your destination". Yes! After more than 5,000 kilometres, four provinces and one territory we met our deadline for our Cambridge Bay flight tomorrow. We even had a couple of days to spare to enjoy the local sights, clean the squashed bugs off the van and provision for Gjoa.

Welcome, yes!

A generous, free, checked baggage allowance of two x 70lb. bags each meant we could buy up to 280 lbs. of groceries and around $800 later we think we've maxed out our allowance. After feeling a little deprived during our Arctic winter, we went absolutely wild in the grocery store which was an excellent one, lots of lovely cheeses, President's Choice products and even Ace Bakery artisan bread. Lots of  great junk food choices as well. We got a lot of basics at what seemed like, compared to Cambridge Bay, very reasonable prices. Tomorrow will be a bit of a logistics headache getting everything to the airport and the van to its secure storage yard. We'll pick the van up again in September sometime (hopefully) to continue the second phase of our road trip. We're anxious to get back to Gjoa now and the weather is looking very promising for tomorrow, about +10C for Cambridge Bay. It will still feel like a big change as we're leaving +24C here in Yellowknife, but, I'm getting ahead of myself.

It was a little too fast, too much driving and now a bit of a blur, but, what a great two week trip. We took a more northern route than we have done before, seeing more of northern Manitoba and Alberta in the process. There were a few surprises along the way.

Starting from Ontario, it took the usual three days to drive out of the province. We could have taken the shortcut through the States, but, didn't want to miss the Sault Ste. Marie through Thunder Bay stretch which has spectacular scenery of the north shore of Lake Superior. It never disappoints. After leaving southern Ontario in full summer, the north shore took us back to late spring. In some areas the leaves were barely out and lilac bushes were in their prime.

Manitoba was a bit of a revelation. It's so flat around Winnipeg, but, if you head north a little, the landscape changes and is quite pretty. We stayed at Riding Mountain National Park and it also was a nice surprise. This is where Grey Owl, whose British origins (he was actually Archibald Belaney from Hastings) were only exposed after his death, to the detriment of his reputation, spent some time. There is a hike to the cabin where he lived during his tenure there. We also passed through Neepawa, Manitoba which has the Margaret Laurence home. We didn't stop, wish we had, but it was interesting to see the town where she came from nonetheless.

The visitor centre at Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba

Bison at Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba

Alberta had lovely parks and we especially enjoyed our stay at Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park. Northern Alberta was actually a very boring drive, hundreds and hundreds of kilometres with no sign of human habitation except the road under your wheels. The only settlements were transient camps for the oil and gas workers. Maybe if we'd taken the Peace River valley route, an established farming area, it would have been more interesting.

The view from our campsite at Lesser Slave Provincial Park, Alberta.

We had this beautiful beach all to ourselves at Lesser Slave Provincial Park, Alberta.

Alberta is Wild Rose Country

Vegreville, Alberta

Once we arrived in the NWT, the landscape changed again. There was a lot more evidence of recent forest fires. The road into Yellowknife is very long and seemed to go on forever. The number of bugs also became impressive! Yellowknife is geographically isolated with a year-round road link only becoming available in 2012 with the opening of the Deh Cho bridge over the Mackenzie at Fort Providence. Prior to that, it was ferry, or, ice road access only. We were impressed with the force of the downstream current on the Mackenzie, practically white water. We're not sure how long it's been since the ice went out. Interestingly, the bridge piers are constructed especially to allow ice to pass without damage.

Deh Cho bridge, opened 2012, Fort Providence NWT.

River gorge near Hay River, NWT

One of the things we enjoy most about the north is seeing wildlife. This trip was no exception. We saw at least four black bears, but, frankly, after seeing polar bears in the wild, black bears seem like rather scruffy lapdogs by comparison. We also saw a lot of white-tailed deer and bison. Unfortunately, the only moose we saw were two dead ones on the side of the road. We also spotted three families of sandhill cranes, a first for us, they have beautiful colouration and stand a metre tall.

Our next post will be from Cambridge Bay and this blog will turn back into a sailing blog again, for a while anyway. I'll leave you with this waterfall collage, there were so many incredible falls along the way it was hard to choose just three.

Left: Kakabeka Falls, Ontario.     Middle: Louise Falls, NWT.      Right: Alexandra Falls, NWT.

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On the Road - Part I

Even though we'd given ourselves two weeks for our road trip from Toronto to Yellowknife, it still felt like too much driving and not enough sightseeing, but, we had to be in Yellowknife by a certain date and the miles had to get done. Another week would have been good. However, we did manage to sightsee in a few places. One area that caught our attention was in northern Alberta where the Ukrainian connection is incredibly strong. We visited Ukraine in 2013 and met newly-found family there. This post is dedicated to them.

World's largest Ukrainian Easter Egg (Pysanka) - Vegreville, Alberta

Vegreville Alberta

Vegreville, Alberta

Just outside Vegreville, we spent an interesting morning visiting the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, an open-air museum that uses costumed historical interpreters to recreate pioneer settlements in east central Alberta. We almost didn't go in when we learned it was the one day of the year when 2,000! schoolchildren and their minders would be visiting from Edmonton for their end-of-year jolly. Actually, it turned out for the best. Sure, there were kids all over the place, but, it meant that all buildings were open and each building had an activity demonstration: blacksmithing, threshing grain, free range chickens, horse harnessing etc....

Hands-on pierogi-making demonstration in the kitchen of an old hotel.

The finished product, delicious cheese-filled pierogies! (these weren't the ones the kids made though)

It was interesting to see the progression of the homes and buildings as the pioneers prospered.

Church on the far left is from the early settlement years 1904, the middle one from around 1920 and the far right is from 1932.

Interior of the 1920's church, note the robin's-egg blue wooden ceiling with painted gold stars.

Example of a railway station and grain elevator. It was fascinating to learn how grain elevators work.

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Road Trip

Sailing often provides beautiful land and seascape views. However, in most places, there are jewels to be seen on land as well. We've driven across Canada before, many years ago, but due to life commitments we were forced to whiz by places that deserved more time. Also, we'd missed a few places in previous travels to Yukon and Alaska. So, as we're in the area, now seemed like a good time to fill in those gaps. Gjoa won't be arriving in Alaska until September. The weather in Alaska in September and October is not ideal for sailing, so,we'll save that spectacular cruising ground for spring and summer. Autumn however is a great time for fall landscape colours, wildlife migrations and being able to visit places not overrun with the summer hordes (both insect and human), so, we plan to do some road touring then.

We decided the best way to 'hit the road' was by buying our very own 'land yacht'. Thanks to the internet and all the market research we had done, we knew exactly what we wanted when we got to Ontario. We needed to buy in a hurry if we were to make it all the way back to Yellowknife to pick up our return flight to Cambridge Bay on June 28. We were successful in our search and very pleased with our purchase.

This is the road trip we are on now. We started in Toronto where we purchased our van and at the time of writing, are near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Once we arrive in Yellowknife, the van will remain in a secure storage yard until we return to pick it up sometime in September.

This picture is the route we will do in the autumn, after Gjoa gets to Alaska.

Here is the Pleasure-Way van we purchased to be our cruising home for our land adventures. Almost twenty years old, but, in very good shape with low mileage.

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A week in Charleston

In the depths of the Arctic winter last January we were contemplating what summer 2015 would bring. Not being able to leave Cambridge Bay until around the first week of August and needing to be in Alaska the earlier in September the better, meant that our 2015 sailing season would be a very short five to eight weeks. Most of those weeks would be spent in cold weather. We decided we needed to purchase a week of summer if we were going to get any this year and booked a trip to Charleston, SC, a destination we'd long wanted to visit.

A Charleston street view

So, we flew off from Toronto for a much-anticipated visit. Flying, as in sailing, also has its weather problems. We only had six nights booked in Charleston. The first two nights were unfortunately spent  not in Charleston, but in lovely Newark NJ, at the airport, due to rains, flooding and storms. I'll spare you all the gory details, but, it wasn't a good start. It wasn't helped by an errant airport escalator that grabbed my pant leg and wouldn't let go. I landed on my face and laid there as the escalator continued to undress me. Luckily, they were stretch pants and G. was able to disengage the now very elongated, and half-off leg with a strong yank. I wasn't hurt, except for escalator tracks on my leg and the shock of the fall, but, it was 2 a.m. and we'd been shuttling back and forth on the airport tram for two hours trying to rebook flights and get a hotel for the night etc. It wasn't funny at the time, but, good for a laugh now!

We did get to Charleston eventually and although it was a short visit we did enjoy it. The heat took a bit of getting used to.

Flowers at Magnolia Plantation.

Tomb at Magnolia Plantation

Nathaniel Russel House, Charleston

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Toronto Arrival

We arrived in Toronto and felt like we had crash-landed onto another planet. It wasn't just the usual sixteen lane juggernaut known as Highway 401 (four-oh-one), Canada's busiest highway, that must be negotiated to get in or out of the airport, we had inadvertently landed ourselves in the midst of an "Anime" convention.

Sixteen lanes of joy...Highway 401

Don't know what "Anime" is? Neither did we, but, it was the height of coolness to be twenty-something and part of the 15,000 strong crowd that showed up for the three day convention. Our hotel and a few others around the airport were crammed full of attendees, most dressed in costume.

For the uninitiated, Anime (according to Wiki), "is a term used to refer to Japanese animated productions featuring hand-drawn or computer animation." Within this definition, there are all kinds of genres. Conventions have grown up around this industry where aficionados join together to dress up in costume, participate in masquerade balls and plays and attend workshops etc. The costumes are an important part of the appeal and the fashion is "Japanese Lolita". Lolita fashion (in case you didn't know ;-) ) includes such subgenres as: Gothic, Sweet, Classic, Punk, Sailor, Princess, Casual and others. Anime is a big industry, but, was totally new to us.

We spent a very enjoyable couple of weeks in Toronto attending to business and getting caught up with family and friends.

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