Sunday, July 20, 2025. I walked the grounds for one more walk. My heart was a little heavy.
Above, a redpoll. To the right, a robin.
Above, a chipping sparrow. To the right, an arctic loon. I never could get close enough to get a good photo of an arctic loon.
At breakfast, I was late documenting this moment: it’s a guest whose birthday is today. To the left of his left arm is a small piece of tasty dessert bar with a candle in it. In the background, is Karen, the hostess, who made sure this guest’s birthday was acknowledged.
After breakfast, I return to exploring. Above, an old boat that had been dragged onto shore and abandoned. (Imagine what it would cost to fly it back to junk it somewhere else). To the right, a can left, well, who knows when.
I love the arctic plants. They are delicate and unique.
These were some of my favorite. I would return here just to take more photos of these.
After my final walk, I take a few more photos inside the lodge.
I also take a photo of the HAWG LOG. Mark didn’t add his two 30-pounders. And I had nothing to add. For us, it was a pretty dismal week for big fish compared to last year. But the cabin and our day of over 100 fish, and just being back up here made up for it.
Inside the lodge is this map, which shows Bydand Bay to the south, Crosswise Island and Good Hope Bay to the North. Aidan said we probably boated several hundred miles, yet still saw only a small portion of Great Bear Lake.
At around 9:30 or so we get into a boat with a couple of the guides, across a small part of the lake to the path to the landing strip. All our stuff is loaded up onto the back of trailer hauled by a very old tractor. On the back of the trailer I see a few of the guides.
The lodge has several really cool jackets and sweatshirts.
We have a lot of time to hang out on the landing strip, because there is a lot of stuff to unload from the plane for the new group.
While they were unloading barrels of stuff, Mark and Lee broke out in a spontaneous rendition of “Roll Out the Barrel.”
With all supplies unloaded and our baggage loaded, we settled in to our seats.
On the way to the lodge, we got a different brand of water. This one came with water we can buy at Costco, and a dry, Biscoff cookie.
I was happy to land safely, back in Yellowknife. It was 12:47 p.m.
It being Sunday, our favorite restaurant, the Black Knight Pub, is closed, so we eat in the restaurant at Chateau Nova. The best part is the dessert. The waitress brings two spoons.
We were quite tired after 7 days of fishing and retreat to our room for a long nap.
After a nice, long nap, we go for a walk. I did a walk like this last year and felt a little uncomfortable due to all the homeless camps. It was great to have Mark with me. We did a short loop close to the hotel and it didn’t take long to see this camp.
This shows the homeless camp in relation to our motel, which is the shorter structure in the background (on the left).
We go to the nearby grocery story one more time. These photos show two brands sold in a Yellowknife store.
On the way back, we see a fox cross the road and disappear somewhere in the rocky base below the Explorer Motel. I took a very blurry photo, gave chase–dragging myself up the rocks with camera in hand–but I did not see where it went.
We also see this yellow flower, which I think is hawksbeard. On one, is a leaf cutter bee.
We return to our room, pack up, and get ourselves organized for our flight home tomorrow. At a little before three p.m., we wander back downtown. En route this time, we pass a yarrow plant.
We walk by these electrical boxes (at least that what’s we think they are), painted with local sites.
Our destination was The Black Knight Pub. There’s something about this old style pub that I really like. Everything is old and well worn and somehow inviting.
The food is excellent.
Before we leave, I make friends with the knight.
On the way back to the Chateau Nova, I start thinking about work, because on the street is this cover for a monitoring well…and wells typically aren’t monitored if there’s not some kind of contamination. To the right is a wooden manhole cover. Michigan manhole covers are metal. We walk around the wooden one.
To give a sense of “darkness” in the arctic in summer: the photo at the left was taken from our motel room at 1:02 a.m. The one above was taken at 4:52 a.m. That’s The Explorer Motel in the background. (Rooms were $50 more per night).
We sleep little, wake up at 4 a.m. and leave the room at 4:59 a.m. A shuttle takes us to the airport and we’re on the airplane by 6:33 a.m.
The tiny airport in Yellowknife.
This sign on the airplane is the same sign as the one in the hallways at the motel in Toronto.
I love seeing what meals are served on airplanes. This meal was more of a snack and nothing memorable. But I think Canada gets top prize for marketing: look at the Canadian flag on the top of the box, the napkin, the wrapper around the bamboo utensils, and on the water bottle. It’s brilliant.
The mimosa was fine as well.
We land in Edmonton around 8:20 a.m. These photos show a Pet Relief Room at the airpot and a cool sign to the right that says “No peeking, we’ve got something under wraps.” In front of the sign (which is in French on the left and English on the right) is one of many recycling containers. It’s very easy to recycle at Canada airports.
I like to see what brands of stuff are offered in vending machines. This one had Pocky, which is a brand of biscuit, apparently, along with Old Dutch and Jack Links, which we can find in the US. My favorite part of this is the empty slot that says “Refuled Shortly.”
Soon we were in the air again and heading to Toronto. It is a longer flight and I am very glad our seats not only have lots of leg room, but also foot rests. I still wonder why all airplanes for all classes of flyers don’t add foot rests.
I note that it’s 9:35 a.m. and yet one can still order a beer if one wants to. I have to drive home from Toronto, so I stick with water.
These were taken on the outskirts of Edmonton.
Breakfast on the way to Toronto was quite tasty.
During take-off, Mark had fun with his wee water bottles, as the video shows.
I like to watch the map as I travel, just to make sure the pilot is going generally, in the right direction. What I really liked on this trip was the monster-like landform in the right photo, looking as if it’s going to eat the land to the right.
Flying is always interesting–watching what we’ve done to the land and how it changes so drastically as we get closer to large cities.
We land at around 3:10 and it takes until about 4:40 to get back to the Westin, pay our parking pass, get a free bottle of water (thanks to the kind young ladies at the front desk) and drag our luggage and tired selves to the truck. We load up our luggage in the heat of the afternoon and, using both Mark’s phone GPS and the GPS in the truck, navigate our way onto the highway and onto the road home.
We stop in Puslich, Ontario so Mark can get some Popeyes chicken. Near the bridge to Canada we run into an amazing backup of trucks–it went on for miles. I feel sorry for them as we toodle on by and enter a short line of cars to get across the border.
We arrive home around 10 p.m. and move through the motions to get our sorry selves inside the house where our black cat, Preto, awaits us. We leave the unloading of luggage until the next morning…and are back to “normal” when we got the dogs from their own vacation resort called Nana’N Paws.