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Saturday, October 27, 2007
Better than the snowmobile
Today I went back to the lab for a couple of hours. The Acting CO
(Commanding Officer, who is also the station Maxi, the doctor) and the
SLogO (Station Logistics Officer) went for a tour of the GAW Lab.
The operator and the student went up by snowmobile, but I got a ride up
to the lab in one of the BV-206 all terrain vehicles. It is a lot warmer
and comfortable than by snowmobile.
I have sat in the trailer part before, but this time I sat up in the
front part with the driver, there is enough room for 6 people in the
front.
Today was the coldest day since I have been here, it was about -31°C
with the wind chill.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Home Sweet Home
We ended up leaving Alert on Friday at 10:45am, it was nice to be
getting on the aircraft. We had to stop in Thule for refueling and to
pick up a guy there. Here we are getting off the airplane and heading
into the OPS building.
We got some good news while we waited, we were not going to Iqaluit for
the night, instead we were going directly back to Trenton. We would be
home a day early. It was avery long flight, just over 7 hours from Thule
to Trenton, not to mention the 1.5 hours from Alert to Thule. In the end
it was worth it, there was no sun in Thule, but there was daylight. We
flew through sun and then back into darkness. I still had another 2 hour
drive home after we landed. And finally on Saturday morning I saw the
sun again, you don't realize how much you miss it until you haven't seen
it for 3 weeks. Here is one of the air crew checking the aircraft before
we took off from Thule.
Today Claudia, Angela and I were playing road hockey and there was an
older gentleman walking down the street. I was wearing my Alert fleece
and as he passed he was looking at us. Then I heard him holler "When
were you in Alert?", after telling him I was there for the last three
weeks, he told me he was there 25 years ago, he was in construction and
he built alot of the buildings. He was curious if things have changed,
he remembers making alot of money because there was nothing to spend it
on, I told things were still the same.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Regina Bound
Heading out to our Bratt's Lake site, south of Regina for a few days.
While waiting at the gate, noticed a lot of commotion down on the ground.
One of the ground crew guys was taken away in an ambulance. Closeup of
the fire truck.
The weather in Regina was good when we landed and stayed that way
through most of the day.
It was only about -25°C with the wind chill, so it wasn't much colder
than what we left in Toronto.
As you can see there isn't much accummulation where it is flat, but once
you stick an object on the ground, the drifts start to form.
As it turned out this was the only day with the sun.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Tidal Bores
My ride for the week in Nova Scotia is a Toyota Highlander. Quite the
change from my Yaris.
We started the day near Jackson, Nova Scotia, it's about half way
between Truro and Amherst. The site is at an old fish hatchery. The
ponds and raceways are overgrown.
An old abandoned building.
I like the door on the second floor.
We had to travel on part of the Cobequid Pass Toll highway.
We drove the north shore from Truro to Annapolis Royal to get to
Kejimkujik. We crossed over the Shubenacadie River, it is Nova Scotia's
longest river. The lower 30 km of the river is tidal and the river
experiences a tidal bore twice daily, with some bores reaching up to 3 m
in height at certain points along the river. Here is the river before.
You can see mud flats across the river.
Here you can see the tidal bore approaching.
There are a series of piers from the old bridge, notice how calm the
water is.
After the tidal bore has come through you can see the wave action.
Some of the sights around the lookout point.
The new bridge which spans the river.
Another of the piers that has been overgrown with vegetation.
There was a fog hanging over the Cobequid Bay.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The North Shore
I'm spending the week in Longue-Pointe-De-Mingan, it is located on the
north shore of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. I flew to Sept-Isles and
then drove about two hours east.
My ride for the week is a Dodge Caliber, it was pretty good on gas.
Especially since gas in Sept-Isles was 147.4 per litre, makes our 134.7
look like a bargain.
Longue-Pointe-De-Mingan sits right on the "sea" as the locals call the
Gulf of the St.Lawrence.
The sun sets around 20:30, after a drive through rain and fog along
highway 138, it turned out to be a nice evening.
The beach is a stones throw from my maisonette.
Longue-Pointe-De-Mingan has a couple of Big
Things in town. There is a Humback whale and a giant Puffin.
Both of the statues were designed and made by the owners of the place I
was staying at.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Fairbanks, Alaska
I had some time in Fairbanks before my flight back to Anchorage.
Fortunately one of the National Parks Service guys we went to Bettles
with offered the use of his truck if I wanted to take a tour. It sure is
a different way of life up here, can you imagine someone making the same
offer in Toronto to a guy they met the day before. This was Jim's truck.
I made a quick drive downtown and parked near the visitor centre. The
Chena River flows through the city.
This monument is next to the Visitor Centre. It honours Alaska's
"Unknown First Family". It is by Malcolm Alexander and is 'dedicated to
all families past, present and future, and to the indomitable spirit of
the people of Alaska's interior'.
This monument is the Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease statue. The memorial
commemorates Russian and American aviators and support troops
responsible for ferrying nearly 8,000 American-built warplanes from the
Midwest through Canada to Fairbanks, where Russian pilots then flew the
planes to Siberia during World War II.
"Da-plane, da-plane!!"
Next I went to the University
of Alaska Museum of the North. The campus is situated on top of a
hill and it gives a view of Fairbanks. Like any building paid for by
public funds controversy surrounds it. The NPS guy said there were
complaints about the winning design and the location.
The main hall is a natural history of Alaska. This a skull of a bowhead
whale.
This is a bronzed cast polar bear, it almost looked like it was a huge
jade carved bear.
It's amazing how big these things are.
A flying squirrel.
A complete caribou skeleton.
The remains of a baby wooly mammoth they found in the ice. You can see
the head, shoulder and one leg.
A display of gold.
A big brown bear at the entrance. They had a good exhibit called "Forced
to Leave". It is a photo exhibition that tells about the World War II
evacuation of Alaska's Japanese Americans and Aleuts.
Another part of the museum is Alaskan art. This is some crazy looking
outhouse.
Some antlers on a wall.
This bear painting goes beyond the canvas.
You can almost feel the caribou rushing past you.
Another shot of the exterior of the museum. As you can see the weather
in Fairbanks was beautiful, they have been going through a stretch of
weather in the 80's, this part of interior Alaska must have similar
weather to the interior of BC.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
South of Anchorage
I had some time on my last day in Anchorage to take in some sights. I
decided to rent a car and drive south of Anchorage towards Portage Lake.
This is Turnagain Arm, you can see the mudflats in the foreground. A
couple of people have died after venturing out and getting stuck in the
fine silt and then being unable to get their leg free as high tide comes
in.
This is McHugh Creek, just one of many that flow down towards Turnagain
Arm.
This was Beluga Point, didn't see any belugas though because of the low
tide.
Looking east in towards the arm.
A compass on the ground to orient yourself.
Some wildflowers near one of the lookouts.
Most of the drive was in cloudy overcast skies.
A timer picture of me.
Turnagain Arm is one of the few places in the world (about 60 places)
that have tidal bores. The Bay of Fundy being one of the larger tidal
ranges.
This was closer to the Portage turnoff.
There was no sign prohibiting the use of firearms.
I was able to see a moose in his natural habitat.
And then I saw some muskox by the side of the road.
And wouldn't luck have a brown bear was off in the distance.
There were a couple of wood bison minding their own business.
I wasn't sure if this moose was thinking of charging.
You must of figured out by now that these animals weren't quite as free
and wild as they look. Close to the Portage Lake turnoff is the Alaska
Wildlife Conservation Centre. This place takes in injured or
orphaned animals. You can either drive through it or park and walk
through. Here is a close-up of the Wood Bison, this herd was from
Canada, they are there for a couple of years and then they will be
released into the wild.
They had the Sitka Black Tailed deer and elk mixed in together.
Caribou or "reindeer" grazing in their compound.
This was a Plains Bison different from the Wood Bison above.
The brown bear sitting for a picture. As you can see there isn't much
between the bear and me, it is about 6ft away, behind an electric fence,
the fence and then a rail fence on my side.
This cabin is the remenants of the 1964 earthquake that hit Alaska, it
register 9.2 on the Ricter scale, the largest ever in the Northern
Hemisphere. The town of Portage was destroyed, and many areas dropped so
much that the saltwater killed much of the low lying forests and
surrounding vegetation.
This bird kept flying around when I was walking along a trail.
This is Portage Lake, the icebergs are from the Portage Glacier. The
glacier comes down and enters the water and extends about 100 feet into
the water.
The glacier use to extend right across the lake, in order to see it
close-up you need to take a cruise boat up to the face of it.
If you drive a little further there is a viewpoint where you can
actually see part of the glacier.
The Begich-Boggs Visitor Center, the glacier use to reach the visitor
center in 1911.
This either the Burns or Byron glacier.
A hanging glacier in the distance.
Downtown Anchorage
I headed downtown when I got back to Anchorage to pick up some t-shirts
for the girls.
Around town they had these salmon on a stick, I think it is like the
Toronto Moose, Halifax lobsters, Victoria whales and Winnipeg bears.
Alaska celebrates its 50th year in 2009.
The Anchorage Visitor Information Center with its sod roof.
The 4th Avenue theatre built in 1947. It is no longer a threatre but a
banquet hall.
Some eskimo statues on a sign.
I tried one of the reindeer sausages, it was quite good.
An indian outside one of the gift shops.
The Bear and Raven statue.
Looking down 4th Avenue.
This hotel was down the street from my hotel.
My rental car was a Dodge Calibre, just like the one I had in Sept Isles
last month.
Gas prices in Anchorage were $4.39 per gallon, that was the equivalent
of $1.17 per litre. The average price in the US is $4.11 per gallon.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Back on the Road...
My travels have started. I managed to stay home for the month of
September, but starting today, I will be on the road through the week
quite a bit. My first trip was to Lac Edouard, Quebec. It is about three
hours north of Trois-Rivieres.
It was an interesting drive, I managed to hit a moose head on and walk
away unscathed. The road was hilly and as we came over the top of one of
the crests, there was a moose on the right side of the road and another
one straddling the centre line. I saw the one on the side first and then
his buddy on the road. I hit the brakes and took out his legs and it
rolled onto the hood and slammed into the windshield. The car stopped
and he rolled off and then he got up on all fours and walked into the
bush. We were lucky the car had a low profile and that it was a juvenile
moose with no antlers, otherwise it may have been another ending. Here
are some photos of the car.
The body landed on the drivers side and the head slammed the passenger
side.
There was some damage to the front quarter panel.
The worst was the windshield, with some help from the locals where we
were staying, we were able to get the windshield repaired, otherwise the
rest of the vehicle was driveable.
The auto shop that repaired the windshield, provided a rental vehicle. A
Dodge Ram 1500 5.7 HEMI, not the most environmentally friendly vehicle.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Heading back
Drove back as far as Montreal tonight after picking up our vehicle
around 4:30pm. In the end things worked out well, we were fortunate to
have some of our Quebec Region guys who we were meeting. They were able
to help us around the language barrier and speed things up for the
repairs. The hotel tonight is in Pointe-Claire, here's a photo of the
Autoroute 40 from my window.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Third Time Zone...
I'm in my third time zone in three weeks. This week I'm in Regina, will
be here all week. The weather should be good for most of the week.
My ride for the week, a Honda CRV, notice how clean it is.
In case you forgot how flat the prairies really are.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Living Skies
It rained Tuesday morning, and when it rains out here it gets messy. The
soil sticks to your shoes and you grow a few inches. We went to Dog
River (Rouleau) and had lunch at the Dog River Hotel. Not sure what will
happen to Rouleau now that Corner Gas has wrapped up for good. The CRV
after traveling the Rouleau road.
A few sunset photos from the site.
Along the RY Trail and Correction Rd.
The land of the living skies.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Ferry Ride
From Rivière-du-Loup, it was an early start to catch the ferry at
Matane.
It is a 2 hour ferry trip across the St. Lawrence River to Godbout.
It was on to Sept-Îsles and then the site in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan. It
was another long day, about 6 hours after we got off the ferry.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Change of Plans
The weather wasn't co-operating forcing us to make a change in our
itinerary back to Toronto. We arrived at the ferry terminal, only to
find out that due to the weather the ferry had been cancelled. It meant
we had to drive back along the north shore along highway 138. The drive
along the north side is a little more hilly and the highway isn't as
nice. We did have to take another ferry at Tadoussac across the Saguenay
River.
Our rental van.
Our stop for the night was in Lévis, just outside of Quebec City. Not
sure what this building was, but it looked like it was cut in half.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Around The Camp
Temperatures for the week were hovering around -15°C during the daytime
and in the -20's overnight. We lucked out with the weather, usually it
is colder and overcast when I'm here at this time of the year.
Our ride for the week was a 2009 Dodge Durango.
Here is the sticker price that I found in the glovebox.
A row of buried ATV's that they use in the summer.
If you got off the main path the snow was deep.
Found this fake cat in the residence. When it was sitting on the couch
it looked pretty real.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Back to Toronto
It was time to head back to Winnipeg to catch a late day flight back to
Toronto.
Passing some construction along the Trans Canada.
Passing back into Manitoba.
Waiting for my luggage at Pearson.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Saskatchewan Day Trip
I did a day trip out to our site just south of Regina. I was able to
catch an early flight out of Toronto and land by 11:00 local time. I was
there to replace an instrument. I lucked out with the weather, the
forecast all week was for -30°C windchill. It turned out to be sunny,
-15°C and very little wind.
There was still a lot of drifting snow from the winds earlier in the
week.
My rental vehicle for the day was a Jeep Liberty.
I finished what I had to do and then it was back to the airport for the
last flight back to Toronto. I saw a snow owl on the way back, actually
saw it when I was going to the site and it was still on the same power
pole when I went by 5 hours later. It was quiet at the airport when I
checked in as I still had a couple of hours until my flight. I was back
home before midnight, it made for a long day.
Monday, February 23, 2009
A New Site
This week I'm out in Alberta to install a new precipitation monitoring
site, actually I'm re-installing the site. It was shut down in 2003.
Waiting for my flight in Toronto.
Esther is about a 4.5 hour drive from Edmonton (where I flew into) or
about 3.5 from Calgary. It is close to the Saskatchewan border.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
In the Middle of Nowhere
It was cloudy most of the day, but just before leaving the site the sun
came out.
The site is in the middle of grazing land.
My ride for the week is another Jeep Liberty.
Looking towards the north.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Goose Bay, Labrador
I'm in Labrador this week for a few days. I lucked out with the weather,
it was sunny today and a some of the same for tomorrow. This is my first
visit to Goose Bay and Labrador. Here is a map showing Goose Bay.
There is about 150 cm of snow on the ground.
The site is located at an Environment Canada Upper Air site located in
town.
My car rental is a Pontiac G6.
There is a lot of snow here.
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