First day on the tundra

Photos

Tuesday November 13, 2012 - High  5°F Low  -9°F – We were up at around 6am to meet in the lobby at 6:50am for the school bus ride to Gypsy's for breakfast. I had the Eggs Benedict today. Clay had his normal 2 egg breakfast. We got the Formica tables lined up in the center again.



By 8am we were driving out of town to the Great White Bear loading facilities to load our Polar Rovers, not to be confused with Tundra Buggies which is what I mistakenly thought we were using. Evidently there is some serious ill will between the organizations. Say what you will, the Tundra Buggy Cam is way cool and in no way harming any one. Anyway, ours was newer and looked nicer and more modern and sturdy. Our Polar Rovers have 6 wheels and the Tundra Buggies only have 4. It was quite nice inside and everyone had their own 2-seat row even with a couple of hitchhikers from Steve's group that wanted to spend every day out on the tundra. It had a small restroom that got more use today than the spacious back porch! It was so cold in the wind back there!

We drove for less than an hour before our first and best bear sighting of the day at the Great White Bear Tundra Lodge. Two big males got very close to us and were in and out of willows. I hope we got good photos but that is harder than you think in the cold. It was something like -2F and -25F wind chill. There needs to be a whole new word other than freezing cold! I will use frigid, but I am not sure it conveys the bone chilling, frostbite-in-minutes feeling. Below are a bunch of Clay's photos of our first and best 2 Polar Bears.

We drove out of the province of Manitoba and into Nunavut and back into Manitoba on dry tidal flats. Around lunch time we found another single bear checking out the Tundra Buggy Cam vehicle and then he dug a day bed and lay down. More buggies arrived. We started lunch and the bear got sick of us and left his bed and our view. We drove some more and found one more bear asleep within a half football field's length from us. It was finally on Clay's side and Clay was the one who spotted it and called it out. This was back by the Tundra Buggy Lodge where we had our best sighting earlier. I think Bill, our driver, would have driven right on by. As the other buggies were driving away from the lodge empty-handed they were all surprised to see him there. A little surprising because the polar bear was very easy to spot and evidently the world's most relaxed and sleepy bear. All the others we saw lying down were fidgeting but not this guy, he barely lifted his head.

While we were here we saw sun dogs. These are like vertical rainbow pieces on either side of the sun caused by light refracting through ice crystals. I have wanted to see these ever since I first heard about them and so, check!

We drove the rest of the day until past 4pm and found one bear maybe half a mile away and sound asleep. It was too far away for me to photograph with my 18x zoom, though Clay got it. Pat had big binoculars and said he could see another bear walking about a mile out past the open water, but I never saw it with my little binoculars. So, Clay and I did not count those.

Without bears or sun dogs, a little tundra goes a long way.

We headed back to our loading dock and Clay and I got a photo by an empty buggy for scale and then it was back on the school bus. We had an unscheduled but popular demand stop at the liquor store. Clay bought 3 Canadian beers for $9.48. They were Angry Fish Pilsner, Thirsty Beaver Amber Ale and his favorite was Fort Garry Dark Ale.

Then we went back to Aurora Inn. Shortly after taking care of business here we got a phone call that there were good Northern Lights and we ran back out, then back in, then more clothes and back out. The evening's plan was to go to Gypsy's for dinner, then to an Inuit presentation in a caribou hide tepee and then to look for Northern Lights. The lights were so prominent and stunning that we all bailed out of dinner early surprising Pat who drove us to the graveyard for a quick look at the lights. Then we went to dinner. I had the sirloin steak tonight, it was cooked well and I ate about half of it. It was big. I think Clay had the pickerel tonight, which was another fish on the menu besides arctic char. He seemed to like it. For dessert, I had a piece of what was basically peanut butter fudge with marshmallows embedded in it and drizzled with chocolate. It was too sweet, but I finished it all to the annoyance of Elly who later told me when I announced it too sweet she hoped I would not finish it and offer her a bite. Sorry, Elly. Clay got an apple blossom and said it would have better warmed with ice cream. The woman across from him got one too and hers had been microwaved. Clay was upset with dessert envy.

Then we went to Peter and Mary's little presentation and then further out of town to see the Northern Lights. Pat got out with a shotgun and a flashlight and did a bear check and then we all spilled in and out of the bus as we could not stand the cold for too long. I think Pat said the temperature was about 20C below. No idea what the wind chill was, but it was frigid. The Northern Lights were amazing. They streamed and swirled and arced and hooked and ran. One even formed a rainbow prism colored counter-clockwise drain swirl. It was otherworldly. This was almost as high on my wish list as the polar bears, so check. We had trouble photographing this. At first it was because we had not changed the settings on our cameras to fireworks, which works. I’m not sure whether our continuing troubles were the cold affecting our cameras’ autofocus, or that the entire sky that night was filled with Northern Lights overhead and it turned out the best photographs of them always included the horizon. Neither Clay nor I ever got any like that. 

We fell into bed a bit after 10pm. We don't have to meet for breakfast until 7:50am. The wind has really died down per the roar and buffeting noise no longer coming from the bathroom vent fan. Note: We eventually figured out that it roars with a North wind, but not with a South wind. There was almost always some wind!

Weird fact: A polar bear can swivel his snout kind of snorkel-like, and is the only bear that can do that.

All the polar bear photos at the bottom of the display are mine (Debbie's) of our 1st day on the Polar Rover. 

Photos