Blogs from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, North America - page 5

Hey guys During the last week or so we have seen our fair share of arctic wildlife. We even had a wolverine run by our camp. We often get woken up at night when bears bang on the side of the lodge, trying to get in to the delicious garbage room! The foxes and hares are in their full winter coats and they look superb. The temps are still relatively mild and the sea has thawed back out, leaving the bears onshore to pace back and forth. So, my day will be spent repairing an air leak on a buggy's brake system, installing two propane furnaces into another buggy and fixing a couple of doors! Hopefully Mr Bear wont get too close? Dave.... read more

Churchill, Manitoba, eh? I ate Manitoba perogies at the legendary Gypsy's Bakery, like a good tourist! Perogies are cuisine pauvre- sheet pasta wrapped around a filling of mashed potato and cheese, tasting nothing like either. Orange crumbly mush, served with fried onions, and sour cream and scallions or chives, all floating in some kind of grease. I don't see the appeal, apart from as comfort food or emergency food. The grease was questionable but I was told it was veggie-friendly; although I haven't tasted anything of that consistency for a long, long time and it somehow reminded me of my childhood. Anyhow. A list! I love lists. Highlights! --------------- -TUNDRA. I couldn't shake the sensation of being on the moon. Bizarre, beautiful, harsh land. -Tundra BUGGY! (An exact hybrid of a monster truck and a school ... read more

Hey Guys. More and more bears are moving through the area every day and they are getting hungrier as well as more curious! We have had a couple of big male bears trying to bite their way in. Tearing away at the underside of the lodge and ripping off panels and fittings! We now have Buggy 1 up and running and on the tundra! Buggy 1 is operated by Polar Bears International and is used for research and live broadcasts, it is the only buggy on the tundra that picks up high speed internet! I am in the lodge dining room right now looking at the frozen edge of the bay and at a young female polar bear rolling in the sea weed... She has just sat up and stopped rolling.... She is licking her leg ... read more

Hey guys. The highlight of the week this week was during a trip to the dump!!! It's not uncommon to see a big, dirty polar bear rummaging through the food scraps at the town dump, but I was super excited to see a wolverine! He (or she) was all straggly, gnarly and grumpy looking, and although the backdrop of plastic garbage bags and piles of Pampers wasn't visually inspiring, it was a very powerful experience! My first ever wolverine. So cool! Buggy 17 got into a wee bit of trouble out on the tidal flats near Polar Bear Point. The driver (not me) hit a big rock (we speculate) and shattered the leaf spring centre pin, and as a result the entire rear axle moved about a foot back on the springs pulling the u-bolts back ... read more

Hi there blog-meisters! Theresa and I have had a fun week up in Churchill... We dined in Churchill's finest restaurants (all two of them), and took a couple of very colourful and scenic drives along the coast. One highlight was having a polar bear run across the main street in town when we were out walking! Just a nice reminder that you could be killed and eaten at any time by Nanuq!!! I had to fly to Winnipeg for a day to do a work related course, which was fun, except the timing was a little bad. It was right in the middle of the week that Theresa was visiting! I guess that's just the way it goes. We got out on the Tundra Buggy a couple of times and the colours were amazing! The light ... read more