Yellowknife Adventure Day 2 - Fishing and More Northern Lights!

The morning was for ice fishing which I was really looking forward to as I hadn't done it since high school - SO has never ice fished.
After putzing around a bit in the morning, I decided I needed a shower.  Daniel had warned us the previous day that the water pump was misbehaving somewhat.  What I discovered as I was taking a shower was that its behavior had worsened and it had difficulty holding pressure, resulting in the water heater cutting out mid-rinse.  AAAHHHHH...
The water pump's final act of defiance was to begin to smoke, making the houseboat smell like a mix of the morning's breakfast sausage and burning rubber.
I called Daniel and he shortly located a spare pump; the houseboat was back to full functionality quickly; a true example of off-grid living.

Gregg from Bluefish Services arrived and we headed out for some ice fishing.  Unlike when I ice fished in high school, in Yellowknife it is done from the coziness of a SnoBear - quite the mechanical marvel.
It was a short drive to our fishing spot.  We mark the spots for the holes under the SnoBear, pull forward to auger out the ice.  Then back up and fish from the comfort of the SnoBear.  It was awesome.  Creating the holes in the ice allowed me to see that the ice was a very healthy four feet thick!

Ice fishing on the best of days doesn't have the action of warmer water fishing.  And the fishing was slow.  Gregg has a camera that he lowers into the hole to watch what is happening.  This is pretty neat since fish can be very lethargic in the winter.
We saw a few smaller fish before a larger whitefish came up and aggressively ate some of the chum.  We tried to entice him with a smaller fishing bait, but he was well-fed by that point.  It was still neat to see.

While we were unsuccessful at fishing, Gregg was a wealth of information and a hoot to talk to.  SO loved the SnoBear and the experience was time well spent.

After fishing we headed out to Walmart to get some sunglasses - the gorgeous sunlight on the snow was blinding and neither of us had brought a pair.
Then we stopped at Bank of Montreal to get cash to pay Daniel.  My bank was not playing nice and the withdrawal was refused - and my effing card was confiscated by the ATM.  I asked for help but the unhelpful Bank of Montreal said there was no way I would be given my card back and it would be destroyed.
I called my bank which was not very helpful, had it ended there I would have been fine.  But suddenly both SO and I started to get phone calls and text messages from my bank's fraud department.  I was worried I'd be 2000 miles from home and locked away from any form of payment.  Now it was my banks turn to be unhelpful.  Suffice to say that some of those conversations with my bank did not end well.
But I'll deal with this when I am not 200 miles from the Arctic Circle.  I was not going to let it affect this awesome Yellowknife adventure!

We stopped at the Pilots Monument which is a monument to the Bush Pilots of the area.  Their job is not an easy one and it is a demanding profession.  The view from the monument was awesome.

We headed back toward the lake and hit the ice road.  At first it was a little anticlimactic, but it was actually pretty fun.
From the fishing, I new how thick the ice was, but it did have a fair share of cracks.  However the road is actually smoother than many of the asphalt roads in town.

The ice road is about the equivalent of eight lanes wide so stopping a few times was no problem (after hypocritically calling other people who stopped dumb-asses).  Up close, the cracks are even more dramatic.  The ice has a clarity unlike anything I've seen before - the clarity was also seen while lowering the camera into the more pristine ice while fishing.

So I am now an Ice Road Trucker - and this is my Ice Road Truck Spark.

And on the subject of cars - the Northwest Territories license plates shaped like polar bears is the coolest!

Back on real land, we saw a bit of Old Town and headed to Bullocks for a combo lunch/dinner.  The place is crazy small so we were lucky to get a table.  Since I saw a whitefish while fishing, that is what I had, panfried.  It was really good as was SO's cod.  The portions were huge.  I was impressed with the staff's ability to handle all the tourists - especially as a lot of them had a low grasp of English (yet better than my Japanese or Mandarin).

Back at the houseboat we rested so we would have an easier time of the night if the Northern Lights show up again.  Except a couple of Japanese tourists climbed onto the houseboat deck to peak inside.  It was weird.  I totally photobombed their picture through the window though.  It is best to just go with the flow on these things.

After resting a while we watched evening turn to night with anticipation.  Conditions were good for the aurora, but these things are never assured.  We were crazy lucky to have had such a good showing the previous night - anything now would be a bonus.

And it did not disappoint.  As it got dark we saw the beginning traces of the Northern Lights.  We suited up in warmer clothes.  With a better lay of the land lake, we headed farther out to the east away from the houseboats and farther from the light pollution.  The walk was fun, but there was really deep snow in a few places resulting in some cold drops.  Luckily the camera was spared any issues.
The lights this evening were more ethereal.  More pillowy.  Not less intense, just more spread out.  This made getting pictures a little more challenging, but the show was just as amazing to watch in person.

There was a band at the Snow Castle - I can't say the noise added much to the lights, but the aurora did make a nice display again over Yellowknife.

The lights continued to twist and turn for a while.

Their display continued to evolve.  With temperatures in the single digits, we eventually got cold and had to head in to warm up.

Warming up inside, we could still look out the windows and see the lights.  But looking at them through the window is definitely not the same as experiencing them outdoors; the cold; the breeze, the Northern World...
After warming up a bit, we decided to go out again, and we were very glad we did.  Several more intense lights showed up and a display that lasted around 15 minutes had more movement and undulations than we had seen yet.

Clouds were drifting into the area and it was getting cold again.  We trekked back to the houseboat to call it a night.  It was still difficult to go to sleep and at one point I saw another brief but spectacular display through the houseboat window.
I've read many accounts of people who spend considerable time at a destination to see the Aurora Borealis and are unable to due to weather or poor solar conditions.  Being able to see it twice it two days was very fortunate.  It was also amazing to see how much different the two nights were - and how similar they were at the same time.