The Yellowknife Inn

... was "Cancelled". Not late, but cancelled. Here we go again! - Tina goes to Air Canada, and they outright said our flight WILL be cancelled too, so they gave us flights up to Yellowknife on First Air, and holy-hell... it's an EARLIER flight. We're thinkin': "First GOOD thing to happen to us yet". - Kicker? Cut to two hours later and that flight is now delayed until 10:30 PM, getting into YK at midnight. We knew Canadian North was full, and we were then ...

Yellowknife!! We have arrived! The final route was very scenic. We saw a herd of buffalo. We saw a red dead forest which glowed amber in the setting sun. Some forest floors were blackened from fire and in certain ares near Rae there was smoke and even small fires still burning. The waters were beautiful. Majestic sweeping currrents sometimes surgins with ...

... thing around Yellowknife. First up was the NWT Legislature tour. Normally stuff like this gives me the yawns but the tour was top notch. We did the art gallery thing as well looking at carvings and moose hide tufftings, and lots of other native art. The north seems to have more than its share of good artists. On Sat we went to the Closing ceremonies for the Games. Great event with local ...

... on my birthday and continuing on to 17 countries, finishing up in Australia and New Zealand. I met marvellous people, both locals and other tourists (you know who you are!) I arrived back in Canada in mid August - and to Yellowknife, where I work for the Government of the Northwest ...

... Canadian wildlife and they were thrilled. I was equally excited to have had the opportunity to catch both of their AMAZING evening performances...and then to top it off to be able to hang with them all for a day and yap in Spanish, something I don't get to do a lot of up here in the middle of nowhere. It brought back many fond memories of my last adventure back to my Latin-American roots this past year.

... to Inuvik. The weather cannot be taken lightly, as I found out later that a trucker had lost his life in the latest snow fall. Accidents are common on this road, often with fatal consequences. The driving is treacherous due to the road conditions and the passage of the occasional semi-trailer truck cruising between Inuvik and the south. Like the Dalton Highway in Alaska, the Dempster is the domain of the truckers and the rest are just trespassers, in a ...

... That, however, would have to be left to the TV show - "Myth Busters" to determine. Unwilling to let go, I paid another visit to the historic confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard. These rivers were of course the super highways of early northern explorations, not to mention the canoe routes for many generations of First Nations peoples. I couldn't resist another opportunity of getting a better insight into the local lifestyle by posing ...

... fait l'erreur de prendre 2 résa Montréal-Calgary / Calgary-Yellowknife ; m'étant rendu compte de cette potentielle source de problème, je l'ai mentionné à l'enregistrement à Montréal où on m'a dit qu'ils pouvaient rien faire et que je devrais sortir mes bagages à Calgary et les réenregistrer... Moi évidemment, j'ai pas insisté puisqu'elles avaient l'air catégorique... Grave erreur!... Ce contre-temps ainsi qu'une 1/2h de retard dû au ...

The countdown is continuing - just over three weeks until departure day, Sept.24. I found out the Rolling Stones were going to be playing ONE NIGHT in New York City when I am there (Sept. 24-30) and it happens to be my birthday! so the signs were there. My friend Barb from Vancouver who is joining me in NYC agreed let's do it! so I ordered tickets from Ticketmaster.com about 2 1/2 weeks ago, held my breath as they were going to 'mail them' and you know what the mail system is like to ...

... is a sufficient word here. He was exceedingly stressed, but despite this he kept it together, kept his head on his shoulders and made good decisions in the wake of that first decision which had clearly turned out badly. With pressure from back in Yellowknife, he got back on the right float and tried to pump the water some more. Within minutes he was knocked off the float entirely by a wave, and the hand pump was pulled from his hand and back out into the lake ...