So what has been happening since Sept 30th, the date of the last entry. A couple of days after leaving Thompson the weather turned bad with really heavy rain. That prompted us to short circuit the plans we had for traveling some of the minor roads near Lake Manitoba and instead we headed pretty much directly to Winnipeg arriving there the afternoon of Tuesday 4th Oct. We took a place at a KOA camping ground on the Western side of the city and spent the remainder of the week on chores (oil change, hair do for Nina), visited some of Nina's relatives in Winnipeg and in nearby Steinbach, and preparing for our excursion to Churchill.

We had arranged our trip to Churchill months ago and the goal of this little side trip was in the hope (unfulfilled as it turns out) of seeing some polar bears. In preparation for this side trip without our ER we had checked out the airport and found that there was a parking lot that would accommodate "oversized vehicles" and had determined that we could park the ER there while we were away. We could even park there the night before our (early morning) flight, thus making it easy to get to the flight on time.

We flew to Churchill from Winnipeg on the morning of Saturday 8th October with a company called Calm Air and were surprised to find that the plane was a medium sized jet aircraft but once on board we found the front half of the cabin closed off as cargo space. We took that as an explanation for the largish plane, cargo was king and passengers only secondary.

The hotel minibus that picked us up from Churchill airport took a long detour on the way to the hotel to show us some of the sights of the place. Interesting but not entirely useful from our position crammed into the back of the bus. At the hotel we only got time to drop our bags before we were ushered back into that same bus for an additional tour of the rest of the town. We later realized that the aim of these "tours" was to keep us out of the hotel until after lunch as the hotel was still undergoing "renovations" and none of the rooms were ready (yes they were still being renovated). After this second brief tour we occupied ourselves with a bit of a stroll around the town, lunch at a cafe called Gypses, checking in at Great White Bear Tours for tomorrows excursion to see the bears, a visit to the local supermarket for some supplies and then finally back to the hotel where our room was ready, ours had fresh paint, new bed, mattress and furniture. An entirely adequate 3 star place, though still under renovation.

Our first impressions of Churchill. A frontier town, drab, lots of junk, not very prosperous. But with no highway connections to the rest of the world, and the recent closure of the ports grain shipping operation the down market appearance was not surprising. However on the bright side our experiences of the day at the cafe, tour checkin, restaurant where we had dinner, and our hotel was that the people we met were pleasantly cheery and friendly.

A day on the "tundra" traveling around in a tundra-buggy looking for bears was of course the reason for being in this place so it was with more than a little excitement that we stood outside the hotel at 7:00 am Sunday morning waiting for a school bus to pick us up and take us 15km to the tundra-buggy center.

The buggies are impressive vehicles, a huge bus style cabin mounted on the chassis of an old fire truck that has been converted to an offroad monster. During the course of our Sunday tour our buggy had no trouble negotiating, big rocks, mud, water and and tundra vegetation. The only downside of the Sunday experience was NO BEARS not even a glimpse. The two guys on the buggy (driver and guide/host) worked very hard looking for bears and then any kind of animal to entertain their passengers but nature did not cooperate. What can one say - that's life.

Our flight out on Monday was not until 20:00 so we had an entire day to kill and since the hotel does not have a lounge of any form we had to find something to go outside. We decided on Saturday that we would rent-a-wreck (an old blue pickup truck) and spend Monday giving ourselves our own tour of the town and surrounds.

The problem with writing the conclusion to an event (before the event is over) is that things can unexpectedly change the outcome and that's what happened Monday after I had written the previous paragraphs.

After picking up the rental vehicle we spent some time exploring the town before heading east along what they call the "coast road". Along this road we stopped at all the "highlights", including the "golf-balls" (two abandoned radar domes) before heading towards a beach from which we could get a good view of the MV Ithaca (an old derelict ship). But along the way we noticed that one of the side tracks was chained off and about half a mile beyond the chain we could see a large group of dogs (Eskimo Arctic Dogs they turned out to be) each tethered on a chain and walking among the dogs was what looked like a large white bear.

As we stood at the chain a vehicle pulled up beside us, and the driver proceeded to tell us that he was a local photographer, and that the chained off area was a preserve for the protection of Eskimo Arctic Dogs, and the pack was looked after by a man named Brian who was trying to preserve this particular breed of dog. And that for a price Brian would let us into the area to watch the dogs and the bear. As this conversation was going on Brian arrived in his pickup-truck and confirmed that for $80 each we could go in and watch the bear with the dogs. Only problem was we did not have C$160. No problem the photographer (named Alex) would lend us the money. Truly amazing!!

So we spent the next hour in our vehicle at close quarters watching the bear wander among the dogs while the dogs expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that the bear was free and they were chained.

After leaving Brian's place we headed back to town to a cash machine to repay our debt when another bear simply wandered out of the forest across the road.

The generous photographer (Alex De Vries at www.alexdevriesphotography.com) got his money back and at his studio in downtown Churchill gave us some tips on coming back in the summer to see the Balugas up close.

After all that another drive along the coast road produced yet another bear for us to photograph.

Thus a very exciting and successful Monday ended at the airport where another bear had to be removed from the airstrip but we did not venture out in the dark to see it. We were pleased that out motorhome was in the airport parking lot. We dropped into bed and slept soundly being very thankful that we had been smart or lucky enough to rent that old blue truck.