The Interlude

Greetings from Kugluktuk! We've made to the Great Really White Really Far North. We arrived two days ago safely and soundly, although not entirely warmly.

Our two-week "break" between Asia and the Arctic was packed full of visits with family and friends, interspersed with a few days here and there in our own home, trying to catch up on mail and other administrative things that had been largely neglected for three months. We spent several days in Markham with Ashifa's family, then headed south for a visit with my family in Ohio. It was so nice to be able to reconnect with everyone!

Visiting with my nieces, Beth and Maya:

Binda takes a snow bath, hiking with Missy in Akron:
We also managed to catch a little bit of the crazy winter Toronto has had. They've had tons (tonnes in Canadian?) of snow this winter and we thought we had missed it! But we got a nice fat snowstorm on our next-to-last day at home, so we got to enjoy it a bit (I think everyone else in Toronto is sick of it). Our neighbors Michelle and Rob have been wonderful helping us out with shoveling our sidewalk while we were gone, so were at least able to do that ourselves this time. And Binda loved playing in all the fluffy snow at the park. We also managed to fit in a couple of cross-country ski laps around Dovercourt Park ourselves.

Ashifa and our neighbour Boysie shoveling out the latest snow:
Thankfully, the snow let up just in time for us to take off for the north. Binda came along for this trip. She has flown before, when Ashifa first got her as a puppy. However, those were flights in little bush planes in northern Ontario and Binda got to sit on Ashifa's lap. This time, she was making three flights in the cargo hold in a kennel. She seemed to do very well (although she was really happy to get out of the kennel after each flight). I think it was probably much harder on Ashifa, the anxious dog-mom, than it was on Binda. Binda's a pretty adaptable pup - she's already a very good subway and streetcar rider. Now we can add airplane to the list. I have to say, though, nothing attracts attention like a dog walking through an airport.

In the airport shuttle in Edmonton:
We arrived in Kugluktuk on our little plane from Yellowknife to a sunny and pleasant day with a temperature of -29°C (that's -20°F, but at that point, does it really matter?). But, you know, it's a dry cold, so it wasn't so bad. :) Kugluktuk (formerly known as Coppermine) is a town of about 1,500. There are two stores, two schools, two churches, one health center, a few government offices, and a lot of snowmobiles. We have a very nice apartment that has, thankfully, very good heating.

Home sweet home - we're in the left side of the duplex:
Our neighbourhood. At the end of the street, the Coppermine Inn hotel is on the right and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP - sadly, Americans, no one calls them the Mounties anymore) office is on the left:
And a little bit beyond that, the Arctic Ocean.... Here's Binda running on the ocean:

From what I understand, this ocean is sometimes made of water.

I'd show you some more pictures, but this was about all I could squeeze out before my hands froze. We'll have to wait for a slightly warmer day for photography. I found that holding on to a metal object with bare hands at -42° windchill is not advisable.

One thing you won't be noticing in any of these pictures is trees! We left those behind several degrees of latitude ago.

As we took off on our last flight from Yellowknife to Kugluktuk, sitting there in a prop plane wearing our parkas, Ashifa remarked "We've had a surreal couple of months." Very true. From the Himalayas to the jungle to the Arctic. Right now, we're just happy to be able to unpack and relax in one place for more than a few days. We'll have lots more to say soon on Inuit culture, choosing a parka, and the price of green beans.