Thursday, July 10, 2025. We are up at 7 a.m. to finish packing, run to Costco to get gas, then to the bank for more cash, to Nana-N-Paws to drop off dogs, back to Costco to get carrots and broccoli for our two groundhog pals, then home to clean so the house is nice when our petsitter, Candace, comes over…and for when we get home.
It’s a lot of work to get the pets ready for our vacation–I have to make up care boxes with instructions for both dogs–Winston, above, and Daisy, left–including, enough food for both, plus extra in case we get delayed.
Meanwhile, Preto, (which means black in Portuguese) needed a stockpile of a cans of soft food because he’s twelve and had several teeth removed just weeks before at a wallet-opening cost of $1,200. The dogs had their teeth cleaned before that, and were groomed/trimmed just yesterday. All in all, it cost me about $2K just to get them to the point that we could leave them with other people to care for them…which also costs me another $1K.
Indeed, it takes months to recover from a vacation.
It’s 11:30, when the house is clean, we’re packed up and heading down the road in our 2016 F-150 pickup. We chose it over the 2025 Ford Escape because the Escape is making whirring noises when I accelerate…and the a/c makes whining noises, too, both of which would drive us nuts during a five-hour drive. I’ll note we only chose to drive from mid-Michigan to Toronto when they wanted $1,500 to fly from Detroit to Toronto. I would much rather have flown.
The first two hours of our drive are pleasant enough and uncrowded. We stop at the last exit before the bridge to Canada and Mark chooses A&W Root Beer for lunch. I try their fish sandwich and it’s awful–the fish is as rubbery as a fake, rubbery snake. I throw it away and find solace in a sip of Mark’s chocolate shake and a Heavenly Hunk I had packed from Costco.
We stop in Sarnia at the Bluewater Bridge and are asked where we’re going, for how long, what we have with us, please drop the back window of the crew cab…so the unfriendly guy could peer into the crew cab and see our luggage. We get waved on and continue driving. It’s pleasant enough until we get near Hamilton and Guelph, where traffic starts getting gnarly, in fact, worse with every passing mile. There are eight lanes of traffic and it’s not nearly enough at 4:20 in the afternoon. Finally, we’re in the outskirts of Toronto in the suburb called Etobicoke. The Westin is there and I am super thankful the truck GPS gets us there directly, in fact, better than Mark’s phone. We check in, park behind the hotel in a gated parking area and carry our overnight bags and fanny packs and my camera bag inside.
The hotel is big, spacious, modern, and the young lady behind the counter friendly and helpful. We check in easily and I celebrate our day by doing a workout in the cotton shorts I’ve worn all day. Getting to the Fitness Center isn’t super easy–it’s a huge hotel. We’re on floor 8. I get in an elevator, hit 3. It gets to the third floor and stops. The door slowly opens exactly three inches and stops. I hit the “open” button. Nothing. I hit the “close” button and it closes…and opens up…three inches. Trying not to panic, I call, “Hello?” to nobody in the hallway. I put both of my hands in the door and pull in opposite directions. The door opens and I jump out. I work out: 20 minutes on a bike and 20 on an elliptical. I return to our room via another elevator, scolding myself the entire time for not having taken my cell phone with me so that Mark might rescue me.
We stay in the hotel for dinner and a Peroni makes the world right again. Mark orders the $45 steak, which earns an 8 out of 10. I order veggie nachos and get fish tacos instead but am too tired to argue with the waiter, who’s second–or perhaps third–language is English. The fish is definitely better than the A&W fish, so ther is that. We are in bed by 8:45.
Friday, July 11, 2025. We sleep in until almost 9 a.m. I do another workout in the Fitness Center, and do so by avoiding a certain elevator. It’s rather boring doing a 40-minute workout, and I find myself intrigued with a diagram on How to Handwash?, hanging on the wall. I skim it–like I do everything I read–and find it overly complicated. I mean, it’s never taken me 11 steps to wash my hands before.
I’m betting it’s a leftover from COVID days and wonder how we survived that time.
I shower and we get breakfast in the hotel: Mark gets the oatmeal; I get some home potatoes–a giant bowl of them–and o.j. It totals $36. Afterwards, we try to convince the guy working the front desk that we need our room until 5 p.m. He says we can stay free until 12:30 but after that it will cost us another $50. We become homeless at 12:30 and spend four hours in the lobby near the restaurant, with our luggage tucked away in a back room somewhere.
I’m wearing work-out clothes for a comfy ride later today, but realize I need something else to change into tomorrow for a day in Yellowknife, and until we get to the Arctic Trophy Lodge the following day. I get my large luggage bag and find something that’s bug-resistant because I know bugs will be waiting for us at the landing strip near the lodge. I put on clean, light-weight work-out pants and tuck a Buzz-off Hat, socks and pants in my already overstuffed camera bag. We sit for several hours with all of our luggage, looking rather like homeless people.
We kill time on our phones, people-watching, napping. At two p.m. we agree to split our first-ever order of lobster ravioli. More accurately, it’s lobster ravioli with grilled fennel. The description is: rose sauce, basil, lobster chunks, freshly shaved parmesan, and cracked pepper. The lobster is chewy. The fennel is fine. Rose sauce, not my favorite. I don’t see any cracked pepper. The waiter brings parmesan and the applicator sticks. It’s not a well spent $32.
At 4:30 we take the hotel shuttle to the airport and ride right past a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, which about makes Mark cry. He said they have amazing steaks, albeit expensive. They are literally right next door to the hotel. I say “Next time,” but we’ve already decided we don’t want to do this drive again. Ever. We jump in the shuttle with a businessman who is intrigued about our adventure and seems to be thrilled with my photo of a muskox, which he’d never heard of. He’s smiling as he wishes us a fun and safe trip.
We take our luggage a short distance to a kiosk where a young man helps us sign in–he scans our passports for us, prints out our boarding passes. He might have noticed we are flying first class and gets us to the front of the check-in line where we get rid of our bags. Mine is just over 50 pounds, which is the limit. But the clerk says nothing. We’re done in minutes. This priority thing is the real deal.
We are off to security, where we pick the wrong line–there are four passengers putting their stuff in trays/bins at the same time and they’re getting mixed up. I put my stuff in two separate trays and they go in two different directions. I get pulled aside because my 1/4-zip top and my bra both have zippers. I get wanded–if that’s a word–and my stomach swabbed for drugs. Luckily, I pass both tests.
Because we were able to fly business class, we had rights to a lounge filled with other similar people to eat food and drink free beer and wine. We eat more than we should and eventually wobble to the gate. There, we run into Lee, a guy from Canada who went to the Arctic Trophy Lodge last year. He’s on the same flight, staying at the same motel, going back to the lodge with us.
We board at 8:20 p.m. after changing gates. Our plane is called the Rouge, which I am betting means, old airplane. This one didn’t have any videos to watch and sounds like it is propelled by a lawn mower when we take off.
Once the plane levels off, the lawn mower noise disappears and a stewardess brings out a warm wash cloth to wipe off our faces, our hands, the food tray, whatever. This is followed by a cold Molson Canadian and warm nuts, followed by cheese lasagne, a salad, hot roll and a pistachio cheesecake. I feel at peace with our lil vaca.
One of the things I love about going to the arctic is the fact that the sun sets but it never gets dark in the summer time. This photo was taken at 12:14 a.m.
This photo was taken at 1:29 a.m. The sun had set, but it didn’t get dark. This was as dark as it got. We are told the darkest hours during the summer in the arctic are between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.
We are met at the airport by Daryl, who met us last year. He is likely in his late fifties but aged not at all since last year. He makes sure all Trophy Lodge guest are present and accounted for. We get our large bags tagged with a Trophy Lodge tag, and Daryl loads our heavy luggage onto a van.
To the left is the display atop the single baggage carousel at the Yellowknife Airport.
I never did ask Daryl what all the above signs mean. It’s such a tiny airport.
We hang onto our fanny packs and camera bag/small backpack and climb onto the shuttle bus. It’s no more than 10 minutes before Daryl drops off the guys staying at the Explorer Hotel, which is where we stayed last year but is $50/night more than the Chateau Nova. Then he drops us off. Right inside the lobby is a sign welcoming us–me, Mark, Lee and a guy named John who speaks little but says that I will catch the biggest fish at camp. John doesn’t say why. Or anything else for that matter.
It’s 2:10 a.m. our time and we’re tired, even though we really didn’t do much except walk, lounge, fly and eat. Mark gets a pop from the vending machine and we are in bed by 12:30 local time, 2:30 a.m. our time. And still, there is daylight outside.
Even at 2:10 a.m., I find the symmetry of the hallway in the motel interesting. After that though, I find nothing interesting. I am asleep in minutes.
Saturday, July 12, 2025. Day in Yellowknife.
We get up at 9 a.m. local time. The shower is steaming hot, unlike the Westin where they have a max temperature control in place. In celebration of unlimited heat, I sterilize myself.
Soon we are to breakfast for a bowl of oatmeal, which Canadian’s serve with maple syrup. We ask for milk, which is whole milk. A nearby ceramic container holds various types of sugar, including brown sugar, which is what I usually have with oatmeal. I try the maple syrup in addition to the brown sugar–it adds a nice flavor I’ve not had before.
A condiment container, shown to the left, has Cheese Whiz. It’s the first time I’ve seen Cheese Whiz with peanut butter, honey and jam. As other guests eat breakfast, I stay vigilant for people who might use Cheez Whiz. I see none.
At noon, we walk to town, because, in spite of having two chances yesterday to exchange some money, we had failed both at the border and at the airport. (I think the temptation of an airport lounge with free food and drinks altered our logical thinking.) Yellowknife is small and yet has a big population of homeless people, including a woman, perhaps 40, who walks up to Mark and starts flirting with him. She is friendly enough, but reads the frown on Mark’s face as a hint and was soon hanging out with a group of homeless people at a small square. There are perhaps six of them.
We have about $1,600 US cash on us and I am a bit nervous as we walk another block…only to discover the first bank is closed. A block away is another bank and as we walk to it, I see an electrical box(?) painted with colorful, happy scenes.
I love these paintings!
At the second bank, a young lady asks if we have an account there; we say no. She says she isn’t supposed to do this, but offers to exchange $1,000. We get $1,300 back, which we will strategically use throughout the trip, along with some of our US cash.
We leave the bank and see that there are about seven people now at the small square where the homeless people had gathered. An argument has ensued and, having heard from a local that drugs are also a problem in the community, I guide Mark along, with an eye for cars we can duck behind in case the people are also armed. Enroute, we pass the painting on the right, which makes me smile.
We stop by a local grocery store for some croissants and a small bottle of o.j. for breakfast, advice given by Daryl because it will be at least 10 a.m. tomorrow before we’ll have breakfast.
Mark isn’t feeling super well, so we chill out the rest of the afternoon at the motel.
While Mark rests, I find the fitness center, which has its own version of hand washing instructions. I note that it’s much simpler than the one in the Westin.
We have dinner at the motel again because our favorite place in town, the Black Knight pub and grill, is closed on Sundays. I have really good fish tacos, and Mark has fish and chips. The best part is the forkful of dessert I had, shown to the right.
After dinner, we prepare for our journey tomorrow, which includes making sure our bug-resistant garb is ready to either put on and wear all day or put on as needed.
With that, we do our best to block out the daylight so we can sleep.
