First day out on "The Machine"

Today is Rememberance Day in Canada – similar to our Veteran’s Day (which is today too) – but interestingly is widely celebrated and commemorated across the country, very much more than we do in the United States. For us, this will certainly be a day to remember for a very long time…our first day out on the tundra vehicles, or “The Machine” as they are referred to up here, was unbelievable. We came for bears and there were bears aplenty. Within the first few minutes out on the tundra, we came across our first bear. Of course, we all took more than our fair share of photos - you never know, it may be the only one you see! As it turns out, this poor guy that was a ways off didn’t stand a chance next to the rest of the sightings throughout the day. To try and sum it up, there are over 1000 photos from today alone…we’ll try to pick a few to post.

We spent the entire day from about 7:30 am to about 4:30 pm out on the vehicles – with snacks and lunch out there on the tundra. The bears were particularly interested in the minestrone soup – bears that we sat and watched for over an hour that did nothing but sleep, actually got up and came up to the cars to get a smell. One rather large guy came up and stood up to stick his nose through the window – to give some perspective, the windows on the vehicles are a good 8-9 feet off the ground. Fortunately, that’s about all they can get in the window. Realizing that he wasn’t getting his serving, he moved on.

We returned briefly to the hotel to warm up and then went to a nice dinner at one of the local restuarants in town. After dinner, because the night was clear, we made a short trip out of town a bit to get away from the lights to see if there was any sign on the Northern Lights. At first, there was nothing, but as we waited they appeared…it was an amazing sight. We ended up spending about an hour out there taking pictures and watching. A spectacular end to the day.

Today’s trivia: The Northern Lights are formed by electromagnetic activity from the sun emitting electrons that react with the Earth’s atmosphere to form the lights…different colors are associated with different elements being released with the reactions. No, they are not aliens.

Last minute note...no pictures tonight since it's late and we have to get up early. There will be some tomorrow from today and tomorrow hopefully!