FROM HERE TO THERE...

I stayed in Pembroke and headed back to the office on Friday morning. Can you tell what time of year it is.

The weather for the first couple of hours was good, these pictures were taken in Eganville, Ontario.

There was still a lot of fall colours on the trees.

I think this was the Madawaska River.

Mazinaw Lake near Bon Echo Provincial Park.

I have put a lot of kilometers on this Subaru legacy.

Down near Northbrook I was in a snowstorm for a few kilometres and then coming along Highway 7 it was mostly rain. These are a couple of pictures taken down near the 115/401 junction.

Next up is London and Peterborough.

I was in Chalk River, Ontario on Thursday auditing our site which is located on the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited property. There will be no pictures of the site since cameras are not allowed onto the property. It is quite the process to get in, they do a quick search of your vehicle, they even have the mirror to look under the vehicle. Then they issue you a radiation dosimeter which is worn on the front of your body and it measures ones actual exposure to radiation. They also hand you a pamphlet which indicates what to do when you hear the different alarms (i.e. run like heck to get out).

One of the guys I was there with does moose calls, security had told us there were a number of sightings on the road and one collision recently between car and moose, when he got to the site he started making female sounds. It wasn't that long after that there was 3-4 year old bull moose standing near the building. Not sure if it was actually his call that brought the moose in or coincidence, but nevertheless it was cool to see.

Left Thule, Greenland this morning at 9:00 EDT and spent 6.5 hours in the Herc en route to Trenton, Ontario. Some final pictures of the Arctic.

The white band in the middle is actually the front end of a glacier.

One of the reasons the temperature here gets so cold, when the winds come in over the glacier.

Our plane being prepped for take-off.

Heading into the hangar to wait for boarding. The door gives some sense of scale of how big it really is.

Inside the hangar, the vehicle is used to tow the Herc in and out of the hangar.

Just one more...

We landed in Trenton around 15:30. The temperature was about 15°C, it was nice to see green grass and fall colours on the trees, actually it was nice to see trees period. About 15 minutes after we landed, we heard that the Airbus has just landed, this one was bringing back the bodies of two soldiers. As we came out, we watched as the families of the two soldiers headed into the terminal. It's good to be home.

According to the sign on one of the hangars, Thule is the Top of The World.

We left Alert Today and were only in the air for 90 minutes over to Thule. We are over nighting and flying back to Trenton on Friday. Compared to Alert there are a lot of foxes in Thule, it seems everywhere you look you'll see a fox.

Saw more white ones today.

In past trips to Thule, either the weather has been crappy or there has not been enough time to walk around. Since the temperature was only about -5 °C and sunny we went for a walk around the base.

We tried to walk as close to the water as we could.

One more photo of Dundas Mountain.

It was a great day in Thule.

It was nice to see the sun again.

Another fox on the way back, they were hanging around the dumpster.

We went for a little tour around the base today to see some of the sites in Alert. First stop was the Memorial site at the end of the runway. They have a couple of monuments for the crews that died in two separate plane crashes in Alert. The first is for the Lancaster that crashed in 1950.

The other is for a Hercules CF130 that crashed in 1991.

A shot of the Arctic Ocean.

This is the Met Shack, the military weather observer works here. It is located down near the runway, they call it Met Horton's, because they have the only Tim Horton's coffee maker on the base. The bars on the window are a new addition, in the summer they had a curious polar bear clawing at the window.

Next up was the mandatory photo op, the Alert location sign. That's me on the right.

A giant inukshuk.

Our work at the lab is done and now we start the waiting game. Today it was mainly cloudy, but at times you could see the sun in the distance shining through.

I figured out how to set the white balance on my camera for these dull days, now the snow looks white instead of the blue tinge from days past.

A new sign since the last time I was up here.

The main entrance to main building.

This is a picture of the runway, tomorrow we may go for a walk and see some of the sites around the base.

No spectacular sun shots or mountains in the distance, the weather was quite different today then the past few days. It was foggy early in the day and then it started snowing lightly. The temperature was warmer, about -15 °C, but the wind picked up for awhile. Days like this it's hard to see a horizon.

This is taken from roughly the same spot the day before.

The latest news is that there will be a plane on Thursday, but anything can happen, so until I'm actually on the plane, then I'll believe it.

Not something you hear a lot up here, because everyone knows it cold. Spent another day at the lab and we're making good progress. The temperature is still in the -20 degrees celsius range, but we have been lucky with very little wind. Can't stay outside with the camera too long, it starts to complain. Here are some shots from today.

Our mode of transportation, there is a new truck but they are waiting on a part for one of the tracks.

The lab, looks like it is in the middle of nowhere, actually it is in the middle of nowhere. From where the vehicle parks or drops us off, it is another 10 minute walk to the lab.

The mountains look close but they are pretty far away.

The sun moving across the horizon.

The snow on some icicles.

Looking towards Crystal Mountain, the rope in the foreground is a lifeline. It helps you find your way back to the lab, in case your out at an instrument deck and the weather turns bad.

When we were leaving the lab, it started to get fogged in.

A zoomed in close-up of the previous shot.

This is Dave waiting for me to stop taking pictures.