2019 Hog Hunt Day 2 - The Hogs are in the Bahamas; The Snow is in Ohio

It was a very hoggy day, but apparently not hoggy enough.

I slept quite well all things considered and woke up to rain hitting the window.  I thought about trying to sleep some more, but my brain was saying, "coffee... coffee..."

After a shower I get my coffee and read for a little while before making some oatmeal for breakfast.  Instant oatmeal isn't my favorite, but it will work.

Rick and I texted back and forth about going out with the rain and I decided it was worth it since pigs had been seen the previous two mornings; if things got really bad there was a small turkey blind I could escape to.  I suited up in rain gear including my awesome new rain hat and gun rain guard.  Rick dropped me off at the same stand from the previous evening.
I slowly worked my way in, stopping a few times to listen if I could hear hogs, but I never did.  It was easy to get situated although I sort of felt like I was sitting in the middle of the field.  It was surprisingly easy to stay quiet, and it was really nice when I first got out there.  There was some persistent morning fog and a quietness to the air.  Even though hog hunting in the morning isn't typically very productive, I do love morning hunts. 
It rained quite a bit of the morning, and the rain was becoming heavier and more frequent as the morning went on.  Hog-wise the morning was a bust.  By the time Rick came and got me, I was ready to be out of the elements.

We fed the hog stands.  Most had good sign, with no one stand really standing out.  There were a few new ones that I hadn't seen before and a couple which must not be in use this year.

At one point I got an email from SO back home with a picture of the snow.

The few inches of predicted snow had turned into something much uglier.  I guess I should have gotten the 4-wheeler ready for plowing and re-showed SO how to use it.  To say I feel genuinely bad about this is an understatement...

Back at the lodge I had a ferocious headache.  But a sort-of nap and a sort-of lunch mostly cured that. 

After dropping off a corn trailer Rick dropped me off at Fish Snatch - this is a stand I like, and I've taken hogs off of it before.  The afternoon was cloudy with the rain having moved on.  There was some wind, but not too much.  It just felt like a good day for hogs.

The evening was quiet - almost too quiet.  At least the box blind was dry and comfortable.
At one point I used the new "Google Assistant" on my phone and asked it: Where are the pigs
It told me the Bahamas...

Smart-ass damn phone - yes there is a famous cay in the Bahamas with pigs, but I don't think I can hunt there.  Or can I???  We'll see how South Carolina does for now.

Eventually it got too dark to see.  I unloaded my gun and headed back, meeting Rick about half way to the road.  My phone had unhappily rebooted a few times - this is a bad time to have phone problems, but I was finally able to email/text back and forth with SO.  She had been able to do some shoveling, but the snow was just too much.  Thankfully one of our neighbors had a plow rigged up and was able to help.  My guess is he probably thinks I'm either a dumb-ass or a mean bastard now.  And maybe I am.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 1 - An Extra Day of Hunting

I slept better than I thought I would and was up too early.  My plan was to wait for the gratis breakfast to open at 6:00, but after lying awake and watching The Weather Station for a while I realized it was hopeless.  After a quick shower, I packed up and put everything in the Ridgeline.
The woman working the hotel desk had to let me back in since the lobby door was locked, but as I walked in it was impossible not to notice the waffle iron was hot.  I asked if it was OK to have breakfast and she told me to go ahead - score!  I realize they probably cost the hotel only a few cents each, but I do love hotel waffles...

Checkout took too long as the people in front of me moved at the pace of dying snails and were doing something more complicated than checking out.  But I forced myself to be patient.  The previous night's drive allowed for lots of flexibility.  I was on the road a few minutes after 5:00.

There was a bit of snow, but it was above freezing and everything was just wet.  Traffic was minimal so I made good time on my Knoxville bypass.  I've never done this stretch in the dark before; it is a pretty drive in the daylight.

Eventually I made my way back onto the freeway for the bulk of the day.  I was listening to Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.  It is a fascinating read/listen about big data and big data analytics intermingled with what can be learned from what gets searched online or from social media.  The author has an engaging style which is funny and self-deprecating while also being extremely fascinating.  I'm not sure every one of his conclusions were fully supported in the book, but even with that, some of what is revealed from Google Search Trends is more than a little disturbing.  I must be a really, really boring person.
After finishing Everybody Lies, I moved to some NPR podcasts including several from Hidden Brain.  It almost seemed like a natural segue...

I made it to Rick's in the early afternoon.  He was busy but texted me asking if I wanted to hunt since I was early - that is why I was in South Carolina.
We headed out and I went to an area I hadn't seen before.  I sat in a World Famous ground blind, but felt sort of out in the middle of everywhere.  Temperatures were cool and cloudy (but much better than the heinous snow at home).
I took a catnap when I got out there, then perked up as the evening wore on.  At one point a deer walked up right on the other side of some live oaks from me.  It wheezed and took off - scaring me more than a little.
But no pigs showed.  As I was unloading my gun some coyotes very nearby started to howl; it was quite loud.  It was magical.

Rick picked me up and we headed back to the lodge.  I ate some noodles for dinner and we talked a bit.  The forecast is for rain overnight, but if it does remain dry I may sit on the same spot again in the morning.

2019 Hog Hunt Day 0 - Drive Day

A guy I work with is retiring soon - his last day in one month.  Most of his work, like mine, is in the trenches keeping the day-to-day business running.  The kind of work management says we need to stop doing so much of so more focus can be made on innovation.  Whatever that is.  As someone who has been in the department forever, he's indispensable.  Management has chosen not to replace him.  His work is being spread among the rest of the department, meaning the rest of the department that already does the work keeping the day-to-day business running.  The kind of work management says we need to stop doing so much of...
It seems like management is looking for an out on this one.  They are hoping people will step up and volunteer for this work to be absorbed into the system with minimal consequences.  I haven't bitten ... yet.  Management gets paid to make these decisions.  Whether they are supported after is another thing.  I'd like to believe that the decrease in bodies makes my job safer, makes my role slightly more indispensable, but if anything it makes it more perilous.  If no one exists to do the day-to-day work to keep the business running, that leaves only the boy-wonders (and girl-wonders) - who scoff at the day-to-day business denigrate those who do it - to work on innovation.  Whatever that is.  The short term implications would be minimal; the long term ... terminal.
Management wants to believe they follow the model of Steve Jobs and Lee Iacocca - charismatically leading to greatness.  But management's decisions often look far more like Jim Jones.  Desiring blind devotion but to what end?  Elon Musk may be a more current management idol, but the ongoing self destruction makes an analogy to Jim Jones almost too pertinent.
So what does all this have to do with hunting hogs?  Increasingly when I go on these adventures, I can't help but look back from some speculative future of unemployment and see it as financial self-immolation.  But if I'm going to live that way, I may as well be unemployed already, or at least underemployed, since at least then I won't have to drink the Kool-Aid (Mr. Smarty-Pants reminds us that Kool-Aid wasn't the drink used in Jonestown, so in deference to Kraft, we should be reminded that Jel-Sert's Flavor Aid was the beverage of choice.  It was cheaper...).

What counts as work, in the skilled trades, has some intrinsic limits; once a house or bridge is built, that’s the end of it. But in white-collar jobs, the amount of work can expand infinitely through the generation of false necessities—that is, reasons for driving people as hard as possible that have nothing to do with real social or economic needs. - Tim Wu

Jim Jones and Elon Musk be damned, I was out the door after work, in the early evening.  I swore I wasn't going to do this; that I was just going to get up super early and head out through the Winter Storm Warning in the wee hours of the morning.  But the cheap hotel about three hours from home and just outside of the storm's impact area started to make too much sense.
I drive in the dark every morning but there is something different at night.  Overhead lights glare meaner, oncoming headlights are angrier.  Still, the drive went well enough with only one backup at the I75/71 split until I thought I was almost to my destination of Corbin, Kentucky, only to look at the GPS and see 82 more miles.

I clicked through the miles one by one, checked into my hotel and got a meatball Subway sub and a Sprite Zero.  I'll have an idea in the morning if Day 0 was worth it.

Yellowknife Adventure Day 4 - Hiking and a Final Aurora Borealis Viewing

Nothing was on the agenda for the morning, but I didn't want to dither.  We headed out a little after daybreak to drive down the Ingraham Trail.  There wasn't any hurry, but early mornings - and especially early weekend mornings - often remove nearly all other vehicles from the road.
Is there anything better than early morning on vacation?

The last several kilometers of the Ingraham Trail are an odd mix of hard gravel with loose gravel on top.  This material would be good to destroy windshields and this road would see a lot of road traffic only a short time later.

There were a few stops I wanted to do, but first it was to Tibbet Lake where the ice road made famous in the somewhat fictional reality series Ice Road Truckers starts.  True to form, there were a few trucks heading out on the ice.  The Ice Road Spark took its place in the convoy.

But only for a short time.  I perfectly executed a handbrake 180-turn heading back toward Yellowknife.  I couldn't resist a few donuts on the ice road.  How many people can say they've done donuts on the same road that was made famous in Ice Road Truckers?

Back down the road a way we stopped at Hidden Lake Territorial Park.  I wanted to hike out to see Cameron Falls.  The trail isn't very well marked and our fist attempt put us on a snowmobile track to nowhere - or somewhere other than Cameron Falls.  It did continue to be a pretty morning.

After turning around we found the right trail and headed out on it as the only people in the park.  The trail was mostly packed snow which made for very slippery going in some sections.  SO had to work up some serious inner mountain goat in a few spots.  Sliding down some of the steeper sections was also a good option.  I would NOT want to be doing this hike in melting and refreezing conditions - that could get seriously ugly.
Many of the views along the trail were nothing short of breathtaking (with requisite Sasquatch rocks).  One of the other things encountered on the hike was complete and utter silence.  True quiet is so rare, but there was almost no wind and we were far enough away from the road that even truck traffic couldn't be heard.  Add to that the sound-absorbing qualities of snow and it creates a quiet that is both unusual and eerie.

Eventually we made it to the falls.  The more scenic part of the falls were frozen over, but there was flowing liquid bottom evident down below.  This seems like the only liquid surface water in the Northwest Territories.

Some of the cliffs are daunting and with the snow, somewhat precarious.

Above the falls is a steel bridge spanning the Cameron River.  After such a pristine hike, seeing it felt wrong, almost vulgar.  Wood maybe, but not steel.

Even up top the water is liquid before heading down the falls which, with the exception of one small section, was covered with ice.
There was a pile of wood with obvious signs of past pit fires just beyond the bridge.  I can only assume this is there in case someone does fall in.  Northwest Territory winter weather and wet clothes could be a deadly combination.

As we hiked out we saw a few other hikers.  One of them was very well prepared with snow spikes attached to her boots.  This would be helpful.

Back at the Ice Road Spark, we again headed toward Yellowknife.  We stopped at a few more places, but there wasn't much to see except frozen lakes until we got to one lake that was littered with small polished stones with an unknown character on one side and one of four words on the other:  Happiness, Success, Peace and Compassion.  We pondered for a while whether they were thrown into the lake to bring the thrower what he or she was after, or if they were left to bring good luck to the finder.  Likely, there is cultural significance somewhere.  I was greatly saddened that there were many more Success rocks found - in fact probably as many Success as the other three put together.  People need more Happiness and the world needs more Peace and Compassion than Success.

We took the long paved road back to Dettah, and went back to the Houseboat via the ice road.  Once back, we lounged around for a bit before heading out to eat at another local restaurant.  The Coyote Bistro was having a fund raiser for one of its employees who had gotten suddenly sick.  There was some shenanigans going on as most of the people there appeared to be locals who knew each other.  There was also live music - bonkers-oddly with big time wrestling playing on the TV behind them.  But the food was good and it was fun in its own way.

After dinner we putzed around the houseboat a while, waiting for it to get dark.  Skies were brilliantly clear with only a hint of a few clouds off in the distance, but I still started stressing about the weather - although I'm not sure why.

Eventually darkness started to fall and the telltale streak of light began to take shape to the east.  It was happening again!
The lights started out very intense.  Even as the sky still retained some remnants of the day, the aurora showed up bright and clear.

A plane flew across the cold clear sky creating a contrail.  This contrail would be very lasting through the night.  It sort of added some reality to the surreal sight, but it was annoying at the same time.

In one picture, I caught a short shooting star (just above the contrail) in a clear case of visual serendipity.

As it got darker the Northern Lights slowly danced and changed shapes, almost with a sense of being.  The colors were definitely more intense than the second night in Yellowknife.

The aurora streaked across the sky toward Yellowknife.  Even with the bright city lights they showed prominently.

Once again I was mesmerized by the sight of the constantly changing lights.  While there are Northern Lights tours, Northern Lights Chasers and Northern Lights Villages, I can't imagine a better way to watch them than alone on Yellowknife Lake only a hundred yards or so behind the houseboat.

As it got later, it got colder and there was enough breeze to be painful.  SO and I decided we needed a break and headed back to the houseboat to warm up.  As we did, the lights faded away for a while, making the decision feel like the right one.

We stayed inside the houseboat to warm up and looked outside every once in a while to see if the Northern Lights had reappeared.  Shortly they did, but not as strongly as earlier in the night.  After a brief debate about whether we should go back out, we decided we had to since it would be who-knows-how-long until we would be able to see the Aurora Borealis again.
After bundling up we trudged back out into the snow.  I left the camera inside since it was still slightly fogged from the cold and I definitely didn't want it to freeze.  I was glad I did as the lights put on a show that would have been impossible to capture in the 1's and 0's of digital film.  Long exposure times make great smooth images, but it washes away all the fine details.
The previously dim aurora came alive in a way we had not seen yet.  It brightened to near daylight levels and danced and undulated across the sky.  Strobes of light raced back and forth across it.  Smaller facets jumped up and down.  Colors not seen in the previous three days glowed amid the background of green.  The aurora looked like the time lapse images frequently shown of the Northern Lights, but it was all happening in real time and directly above us.  I'm not sure how long this amazing light show lasted, but by the time it faded it was well into the next day and we both realized how cold we were.
As the lights dimmed once again, thin clouds started to move in and obscure all but the most intense stars.  We knew that the lights were not done for the night, but it felt like they had put on a final intense display just for us.  If there was a better way to end our time spent experiencing the Aurora Borealis, I'm not sure what it could have been.

Yellowknife Adventure Day 3

With nothing planned for the day, it started a little slower.  Clouds had rolled in overnight, but there were still some clear patches.  No aurora could be seen through the water vapor overhead.

Once fed and showered - the shower still required a trick to stay hot - we hit the road for a bit of hiking.  Back Bay is an area most accessible in the winter over the frozen lake.  I had found some instructions on how to get there which were a bit old, and there must have been lots of building since then.  But we found a way to the lake and headed around the bend to get to Back Bay.
SO doesn't have much mountain goat, so there was some indelicate slipping.  Luckily this happened without any major trauma.
We walked through the Back Bay Cemetery and on to the Ice Caves.  This must be an area of some kind of flowing water during warm spells since the area is as slick as an ice skating rink with ugly brown ice.  But the remnants of flowing water creates a small ice caves with stalactites of ice.  It would be neater if they weren't broken off.

The hike back was pretty nice with lots of formations from the Canadian Shield.

The Back Bay Cemetery itself is small.  Many graves are not marked or only appear to be marked by a recent, simple wooden cross.  Thankfully, there isn't much evidence of people messing with them.  The scene with birch trees, pines, rocks and snow was serene. 

We wound our way back to the Ice Road Spark and did a little more driving through Yellowknife.  This included Ragged Ass Road - a little bit of kitsch never hurt anyone - especially when it has real history behind it.

After resting a bit back at the houseboat, we walked down to the Snow Castle.  This is a huge (and getting huger) castle that is built every year on the ice.  The goal was to try to get there early, but it was already starting to fill with people.  It was quite neat to see it.  Despite some evidence of wooden substructure, most of it is ice and snow.

Some of the carving is exquisite.

There was a craft show going on as well inside of it.  There were several tables set up by talented artists selling their stuff.
We hadn't been there that long, but as we left it was all ready getting zoorageous.  I can't imagine what the Snow Castle must be like if a couple of big tour buses show up at the same time.

We had walked to the Snow Castle from the houseboat, and the walk back had the wind in our face.  Despite the nice sunshine, it was quite cold with any breeze making it more brutal on the way back.

After a siesta back at the houseboat (is a Southern and Mexican word like that appropriate so close to the Arctic Circle?) we headed out again for a bit of exploring.  First up was to Ice Road.  Why do it again?  Because it is still there.
There was lots more overall movement on the ice.  Skiers, snowmobilers, walkers, bikes, dogs, everything.  I'm guessing that as a weekend day, Saturday sees the usual hoards of tourists and the locals out in force.  But it is a big lake so it never felt even remotely claustrophobic.  It is really interesting how the lake dominates the area in the winter.  Land can be unforgiving and terrain unchanging.  But the Great Slave Lake forms a perfect winter wonderland - easier to get around, faster to get anywhere, lots of room embrace the cold.

The Ice Road was much slicker this time and at one point tourists covered over half of its width.  It still surprised me how deep and numerous the cracks appear in the ice.  Any cracks must form a kind of puzzle, locking everything firmly in place; it is perfectly safe.  But some of the cracks do form ridges showing a kind of tectonic movement of the ice.  As any glacier will tell you, ice is a solid that is still alive.  Staying on the houseboat, some of the ice booms have been disconcertingly loud.

After being Ice Road Sparker again, we headed into town to eat.  Finding a parking spot at the Northwest Brewing Company was a challenge.  There were several almost spots, but nothing that even the Ice Spark could fit into.  It appears that a parking lot is being built across the street, but it currently has "No Parking" signs all over.
So we drove around and as we were thinking of a Plan B, a spot opened up right in front of the Brewing Company.  Once inside, we realized it was Saint Patrick's Day - definitely a drinking day if there wasn't already enough reasons to do that in the frozen North.

Dinner at the Brewing Company was very good before heading back to the houseboat.  Solar conditions were again very favorable for the aurora, but the weather was not.  Clouds decreased and increased through the evening and as it got dark, all looked hopeless.
But!  Through a brief hole in the clouds the eerie glow of the lights peaked through.  This was more of the peep show version of the Northern Lights and it didn't last long.  I'm not sure how I would have felt if this had been my only viewing of the Northern Lights - so close, yet so far.  But the first two days in Yellowknife were spectacular.

After waiting out the clouds a little more, SO and I decided it was a little futile to stay up.  The weather forecasts called for nearly complete cloud coverage with the potential for it to get even thicker overnight.  Bed time came a little earlier than the previous two nights.

After some crazy dreams woke me up, I looked outside and through a much larger hole in the clouds a bright aurora was clearly visible.  I watched through the window for a few minutes and decided there was no reason not to go outside.  After putting on the winter woolin's and watching a short time outside, I decided to grab the camera as well.  But by the time I got back to a good spot to set up clouds were rolling in again.

If the first viewing of the night was a peep show, this one was the quick tease.  I can only guess that if the aurora was that visible through the brief windows of clouds with some high clouds still obscuring it, had the sky been clear it would have been a dazzling display. 

After that it was sleep time for again, knowing somewhere above those thick clouds the Aurora Borealis was making a show few in Yellowknife could see.  There are hardly enough superlatives to describe what I was thinking after being able to see the aurora on three consecutive nights.

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.

Yellowknife Adventure Day 1 - Travel Day (And Northern Lights!!!)

The chronic worrier that I am, I moved from obsessing about clear skies and favorable solar conditions for seeing the northern lights, to worrying about getting to Yellowknife.  While perusing the Canadian weather the previous day, I noticed an alert for Calgary.  It only took a few more minutes of searching to see that a winter storm, albeit minor, was going to hit a very narrow area in Alberta, including Calgary.
However, of the places that should have experience handling winter weather, Canada and Calgary were high on the list.

Oddly, I was not able to do online checkin through WestJet - who I had booked tickets with, but was able to do it through Delta, as the first connecting flight was partnered to that airline.  Whatever works...

I was up around my normal time for work and getting ready.  Final closing up of stuff was done before heading to the airport around 4:00 AM.  Roads with little traffic got us to the airport easily.
With limited room in my luggage, I had to wear my winter-type boots.  These proved problematic going through security once at the airport.  It took a few trys to make it through the metal detector, but there was lots of time to make the flight.

Soon enough we were boarding a small Canadair Jet for the short hop to Toronto.  The small plane was cramped, but it was a short flight.
Once in the air, the sunrise was really pretty.  Not motorcycle sunrise out west awesome, but still pretty.

I couldn't get the automated customs system to work for me once in Toronto, so I had to take my ticket of failure to the desk for help.
The customs agent was surprisingly friendly - many I've had in the past lacked anything close to a sense of humor.  It may just be a tactic to look for information, but being nice is almost always free - on both sides.
"So, where are you going today?
"Yellowknife."
"What?  Most people get away from Yellowknife for a vacation, what are you doing there?"
"Hopefully seeing the Northern Lights."
"OK, neat, where are you staying?"
"On a houseboat."
Pause, "Are you serious???"
"Yes, this time of year it is locked in ice though."
"I've never heard of that.  That is the craziest thing I've heard in a long time."
It probably wasn't, but the interaction was far better than the glares I've gotten a few times.

After a short layover, we were on the plane to Calgary.  The taxiing seemed to take a long time and we wound up back at the gate - the captain announced a mechanical problem which had people, including the captain, scurrying all over my side of the plane.  I couldn't see what he was doing, but I suspect he was pulling out a giant dipstick to check the oil since he said the issue had something to do with an oil warning light...

We were airborne about an hour late, headed to wintry Calgary.
I was reading One for the Road by Tony Horwitz.  Mr. Horwitz is an extremely talented writer and I loved the book.  Reading a travel book is probably more appropriate than something like William Faulkner's As I lay dying.
The flight to Calgary felt painfully long - and just painful.  The unsettled weather ahead made it even worse.  The descent back to terra firma felt like it took a long time, or the clouds were extremely thick.  Probably both.

I was surprised how much snow there was on the runway.  I don't recall seeing that much snow on a runway ever before when flying in the winter.
Off the plane, we wound around the airport to the Yellowknife gate.  However, there was little in the way of food at the "newer" part of the airport, so we retreated back to a Tim Hortons for some overpriced, if reasonably good sandwiches.

The "newer" part of the airport had these wierd electric busses to get around.  The were frighteningly similar to the buses in the spaceport in the move Total Recall, except the drivers were humans instead of creepy anthropomorphized automatons.

Around 50% of the Calgary flights were cancelled or delayed - but ours wasn't, giving hope all would be well.
The boarding area was a mix of many destinations and very international in people.  I also started seeing more people in heavy boots and thick coats - Yellowknife takes a different kind of preparation.  Things were a little slow with the weather.  There was considerable snow, but it was probably minor by Calgary standards.
After boarding the plane they hosed us down with yellow deicing liquid - it made the plane outside my window look like a big dog and peed all over it.  Whatever the liquid is it must be very shear thinning since it stuck like crazy to the plane until around the take-off air speed.

The flight to Yellowknife passed quickly enough.  A headache faded in and out as a result of the somewhat uncomfortable day.  As we approached Yellowknife the sun sank low, making a pretty sunset.

And approaching the runway, little was seen except for trees.  This feels truly remote.

Once on the ground we exited the plane through an outdoor ramp into the Northwest Territories cold.  The airport was tiny and absolutely filled with people - a shockingly large percentage of them Asian.  From the time I had to look around I suspect that most people head to Yellowknife on organized tours; this was reinforced by seeing many buses on our way away from the airport.

We made our way to the rental car counter and were given a bright yellow Chevrolet Spark - perhaps not my first choice for car or color, but it will work.  We stopped at a grocery  store to buy some snacks, food and to call Daniel - the owner of our houseboat.  He confirmed how to get there.

It was a short drive to the Ice Road, then to the houseboat.  In the dark, at first I thought it was a shack, but it was very quaint and comfortable.  Daniel met us outside and gave us a tour.  It was warm and cozy and completely off grid.  Even the electric comes from a mix of solar and a backup generator at one of the other houseboats.  The only really unusual thing was the off-grid potty; that will definitely take some getting used to.

We had bought a frozen pizza assuming there would be at least a toaster oven.  But with nothing even remotely like that, we had to resort to cutting our pizza in quarters and making pizza grilled cheese sandwiches, which was barely successful.
As we were cooking, I looked outside and saw what I thought at first was a contrail from an airplane.  Watching it, it began to dance and swirl.  I realized what I was seeing was my first sighting of the Northern Lights!  Aurora Borealis!

As it got darker, the lights grew in intensity.  They danced across the horizon from the west, overhead and to the south.  It was an amazing end to a day and an amazing beginning to the adventure.

It wasn't a fleeting view either, the ethereal lights grew and shrank and moved across the sky for several hours.  It was cold, but we bundled up and spent considerable time outside watching them.

Our grilled cheese pizza got cold - no matter, it wasn't that good anyway.

Eventually we had to call it a night, which was very hard to do with the Northern Lights continuing to dance.  I'll admit that I got up a few more times and even got dressed again to go outside a couple more times.

The Northern Lights flitted across Orion The Hunter at one point, which was quite a site to see.

I'll sleep sometime.  It wasn't that easy to sleep anyway.  While the houseboat is locked in around three feet of ice, there was quite the chorus of unusual noises.
Even in the morning remnants of the Northern Lights danced across the brightening sky.

The evening reminded me of a quote by Annie Dillard:  I cannot cause the light.  The most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.
Safe to say that we hit the lottery by being able to see such an amazing show of the Northern Lights so early in the adventure.