My Northwest Territories Adventure

Well. I did it. I dug into my shallow pockets, forked out 600 bucks and took a 2 day bus ride up North. I went for a couple reasons. One of them being to see my sister, niece, nephew and brother in law; another reason being me just wanting to go on some sort of adventure.

I hopped on the bus at 6:00am on November 5th, at the Greyhound Bus Depot in downtown Vancouver. I was excited. I stuffed my jacket full of the essentials. My Ipod packed with Bowie, The Beatles and Pearl Jam, a small guitar case containing a Ukulele and a sweater and my camera. Grabbed a coffee before I climbed aboard and took a seat at the back.

I knew it was going to be a long trip, so I went RIGHT to the back and took the only spot on the bus with three seats in a row. We took off and I was in good spirits.

Here is a picture of the bus depot at 6am. It's pretty dark.



So.. there we were. About 5 other passengers and I, on the road to Edmonton. We stopped quite a bit. I would get off at every stop to stretch out and get myself a snack or a drink. My old friend coffee and I became closer than ever before.

The bus ride up was pretty good. No annoying people on the bus or babies screaming. Not until 2 hours before Edmonton, anyway.

The sun had just gone down and I was on the bus for almost a full day... when we stopped in a little town about 4 hours away from Edmonton. This guy gets on the bus and of all the free spaces on the bus... he chooses to sit directly in front of me at the back of the bus.

I'm laying across 3 seats, trying to get some shut eye, knowing it was going to be pretty difficult if I didn't start early... and the first thing he does is flip open his cell phone and talk extremely loud to some friend. I didn't mind at first... but then he started calling ALL of his friends, it seemed like. He was on the phone from the time we left that little place, ALL the way to Edmonton. Horrible. Anyway, we eventually got to Edmonton and the guy switched buses, thank God. I continued on my merry way.

The rest of the bus trip was fairly uneventful. I saw some Caribou, a Fox and some Bison. Seeing the Rocky Mountains while going through Banff was amazing. I recommend a drive through there in the Winter time. It was beautiful. I didn't get any pictures at that point, I was pretty exhausted.

Let's skip to when I get into the Northwest Territories, a day later. I was a little worried about what to expect when I got there, though. People were saying that the weather was pretty horrible and there isn't much there... so I was a little apprehensive about what I find. Not to mention the last bus depot we stopped at before getting to Yellowknife (about 11 hours away) looked like this:



I didn't see much on that final bus ride. It was night time and snowing pretty heavily. I just hung out at the back of the bus and watched "The Fantastic Four" and read a bit.

The bus pulls into Yellowknife at around 11:30pm on November 7th. It was finally over. I have never had to sit in one place for that long ever. It was extremely difficult and most of the time, fairly boring... but I'm glad I did it. Reason 1: I go to see a bunch of Canada. Reason 2: I know never to do it again.

So I step off the bus, which stopped at a shell station; dragged my bags out of the luggage area and stood outside while I waited for my sister to come pick me up. There's a man standing outside of the station, giving me the awkward eye - So I was a little worried.. being completely exhausted and more cold than I have ever been in my entire life. He walks around the corner and comes out with this other guy. He points at me and the guy he went and got starts walking towards me. So, he gets to me and asks me my name. I tell him.. at which point he reaches into his jacket and pulls out his wallet. He flips it open to reveal his police badge. Great, I thought, sat on a bus for 2 days and now I'm about to be arrested. Wonderful.

He asked me a bunch of questions about who I was and where I was coming from and why I was there. I told him, without questioning him... mostly because I was dead tired. He closed his wallet, stuffed it back into his jacket and told me to have a good night. It was a weird welcome.

Anyway, my sister picks me up and I finally made my way to a nice warm, comfy bed. I got all rested up for the next morning. Now, I can't really remember what we did that first day. I think we went on a tour of the town.

My sister showed me all sorts of neat things like the mines (Gold mining was huge in Yellowknife, way back when. Apparently that's where Yellowknife gets it's name. From the copper, yellowish coloured knives the miners used).

We drove all around Great Slave Lake and saw some of the scenery. The lake was frozen solid, which is something I have never really seen before. There were adults walking across the ice, pulling their kids in little sleds across. It was pretty cool! She showed me the very first Hudson's Bay Company building (See Below) Which was cool to see after slaving away at their Target-like side store, Zellers, for 2 years (my first job). Not all that pretty. But still neat.

There were two main things that made this trip for me, other than seeing my family, of course.

1. Dog Sledding. If you ever get a chance to do this, do it. It's SO fun. I had a team of four dogs that pull me all the way around a frozen lake. They were pretty small dogs, but they were pulling me really, really fast.

I think I was having too much fun to realize how cold it was, until we were on our way back. We were going against the wind, while it was snowing. It was pretty intense. I felt like I was in a movie. Towards the end, the dogs got pretty tired and slowed down a bit. I was thankful. Anything to stop that freezing wind!

There was a woman that would go way ahead of us on a snowmobile, get off and take pictures of me with my camera as I drove by.

 

2. The Northern Lights. It was cloudy every single day of the trip, until the very last night. I was really excited at notion of being able to see them on my last night. Kind of like a parting gift. My bus home left at 1am, usually when they are the brightest. To my dismay, the sky was completely clear of any sort of light at all. It wasn't until an hour out of Yellowknife that I looked into the sky and saw the most amazing dancing blue, green, purple-ish lights stretched across the sky. It looks nothing like how it does in pictures.. or in the movies. It's surreal. It's something everyone should see at least once in their life. Unfortunately, none of the pictures I took really turned out. Oh, well. I doubt I'll ever forget what they looked like.

This is getting pretty lengthy so I'm going to cut it short. I'm more than willing to talk about it more if y'all want to leave some comments.

In conclusion, a 2 day bus ride was definitely worth seeing the Northern Lights, it was excellent to see my sister (the last time was at my dad's funeral, so not under the best circumstances) and there's a lot more fun to be had in Yellowknife than people give it credit for.

So with that, I leave you this incredibly cute picture of my Niece.

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