From Whitehorse to Carcross and Back Again

Howdy folks!  I hope everyone is doing well.  Since I didn't go in to much detail yesterday I'm going to cover the last two days in this post.  I'm going to forgo the pictures today since the process of resizing them is brutally tedious on the tablet and it's already pretty late.  From a photo backup/organizing/blogging perspective the tablet has turned out to be a pretty poor choice on this trip.  Ah well, live and learn.

So, let's skip on back to yesterday.  We (reluctantly) packed up and left Sungdog Retreat in the morning.  That was a brilliant place to stay and we really enjoyed our time there.  Sadly that was up, so on to other things.  Our next stop was Boreale Mountain Biking Lodge, far to the south of Whitehorse, but check-in time there wasn't until 4:00, so we had some time to spend.  Fortunately we have our trusty rental car, so we at least had a place to store our luggage.  Something to keep in mind if you ever visit Whitehorse is that a car is required equipment.  The freedom to travel around has been crucial to this trip.

Since we knew that we were unlikely to be back that far north of Whitehorse we made sure to hit the Yukon Wildlife Preserve before leaving the area.  The preserve is a massive piece of land divided up in to enclosures for northern animals that are designed to closely mimic their natural enivronments.  It was privately operated for years, but now is run by the Yukon territorial government.  (*Side note: that last sentence took me a full five minutes to write.  Not loving this tablet and bluetooth keyboard combo.  Okay enough techno-bitching.)  The preserve is a great way to see animals from the far north.  We took the bus tour, which turned out to be a great option.  Since we're outside of the traditional tourist season we were the only ones on the bus.  Also, our guide Maureen gave us a huge amount of interesting and entertaining information about the animals and the facility.  We also got very lucky; there's only one moose currently at the preserve, and his territory was enormous so spotting him isn't guaranteed, but we got a great look at him.  Also, since a lot of the trees are losing their leaves we were able to get a good look at the elusive lynx.  Great fun!

After the Wildlife Preserve we grabbed lunch at a nearby coffee shop and then went to the Takhini Hot Springs for a relaxing soak.  Life's hard.

By the time we'd finished the laborious task of lounging around in the hot tub it was getting late in the afternoon, so we started driving down to the lodge.  We were the only people staying at the lodge last night... the previously mentioned off-season still applies.  This meant that Euphy had the complete attention of the lodge's 3 resident dogs, much to her delight.  We wandered around, occassionally trying to wrestle a stick away from Lilly, who would whack me with it if I neglected that duty.  It wasn't until we sat down for some nice pre-dinner appetizers that Euphy started to feel unwell.  She went to have a nap, but unfortunately that was the end of the evening for her.  Fortunately she felt much better this morning.

We started today by heading a bit further south.  The Boreale Lodge isn't far north of the small town of Carcross.  We stopped for a bit to admire the colours of Emerald Lake, and wandered around in the Carcross Desert.  Technically it's not a desert, but just a huge area covered by dunes blown up from the nearby lake.  I read that on a sign, seriously don't expect me to educate you all on the difference between a desert and a series of sand dunes becuase they look the same to me.

After visiting Carcross for awhile we made our way back up to Whitehorse and got checked in to the Best Western here.  We'll be spending our last two nights in downtown Whitehorse instead of living out on the fringes of society as we have been.  I really will miss those remote areas though; they're where I belong.

We spent this afternoon out at Sky High Ranch on a horseback riding tour.  We rode up to the peak of a mountain overlooking Whitehorse, which was a glorious view!  I learned todaythat riding a horse is very much like riding a bike - you can get around quickly, it's advisable to wear a helmet, and if you don't do it often it's murder on your backside.  Weep, my friends, for my shattered posterior.  That aside, it was a great way to spend an afternoon.  Also, my horse was a black stallion named Thunder.  I don't know what you did today, but I'm pretty sure I've got you beat there.

Well, that wraps up the past two days.  We had a lovely dinner at the inspiringly named Burnt Toast Cafe (it really was fantastic, don't believe the name) and are now relaxing back at the hotel.  I'm going to call it a night, but I'll be back in action tomorrow.  At this point it's only a few more days until I'm back in Toronto (a fact which fills me with grief) and so I think that rather than the labour-intensive process of resizing all the photos I'd like to share on the tablet I'll just wait until I'm back and do a big photo round-up.  I'll keep the text coming until then though.  Good night everyone.

Photos!

Hi again everyone.  I figured out how to resize images on the tablet, so I've got some photos shrunk down for easy upload.  Given that I'm in a very remote location this still might not go according to plan, but here goes nothing...

Photos!  Woo!  Okay, this one is the Canadian History Museum.

The subtle design of our Parliament building interior.

Found this lovely spot just wandering around Ottawa.

Parliament buildings at sunset.

A view of the river while crossing back to Gatineau.

My close, personal friend Mr. Fox.

The mornings have been slightly cool.

The mighty Yukon river as seen from downtown Whitehorse.  You can't really tell from a still photo, but the current is fierce.  It'd be a pretty easy trip in a kayak... one way.

The spectacular Miles Canyon.  That actually is a pretty good representation of the colour of the water there.  Absolutely gorgeous.

On the way back from Miles Canyon we stopped at an overlook high above the river.  The bands of yellow are birch trees in their Fall attire.

Euphy approves of the scenery.

Okay, so that doesn't really catch me up for photos, but I hope it makes up for the absence of them over the last few days.  I'm still having issues getting them off the memory card, but I'll try to get that sorted.

We're all settled in at the Boreale Mountain Biking Lodge tonight, but unfortunately Euphy isn't feeling well.  I'm trying to type this out hunched over a small desk in an attempt to keep the light from being unobtrusive.  My intention was to follow this up immediately with a post about today's activities but I'm going to put that off until tomorrow and shut this operation down for today.  Time for us both to get some rest I think.  Hope you enjoyed my meagre offering of photos for now.  Be sure to check back in tomorrow for another update.

Checking in From Whitehorse

Hello ladies and gents!  It was not supposed to be this long until my first blog post of the trip, but the blogging has been (as always) fraught with technical difficulties.  I had absolutely no luck connecting to Blogspot from our hotel in Gatineau for that leg of the trip, and connectivity in Whitehorse has been trickier than expected.  Turns out that Rogers hasn't yet managed to defile this pristine wilderness, so neiter Euphy or I have any cell coverage.  Being disconnected has been a terrific vacation from my normally techno-centric life, but the blogging suffers for it.  It's also a bit of a hike at the lodge we're staying at to get to the one building with WiFi and we simply haven't had the time... busy days.

I've also made a serious miscalculation in the equipment department.  I'm attempting to do the trip with just my tablet, using a USB adapter to download my photos and a bluetooth keyboard for blogging.  Unfortunately my daisy-chain of adapters to read an SD card on to the tablet is choking, and I'm unable to download more than a few files at a time.  Combine that with my tendency to photograph everything that moves and most things that don't and I'm simply unable to organize my photos on the go.  Sadly that's going to impact my ability to post things to the blog, but I've grab some of the files, so I'll get some pictures up here just as soon as I'm done whinning about the vagaries of modern technology.  My bluetooth keyboard was having trouble keeping up with my typing, but it seems to have suddenly improved.  My tablet needs about 15 minutes to weep quietly to itself if it's been offline for more than a day.  It appears that the weeping has subsided and I may now go about my day.  So, on with the show!

Obviously a lot of catching up to do, so I'll have to be brief, but I'll do my best to get caught up.  We flew out of Toronto on Saturday morning on route to Ottawa.  We stayed at the Four Points Sheraton in Gatineau, which turned out to be a good option as it's right across the road from the Canadian History Museum, which in turn is right across the river from Parliament.  All-in-all a good point for exploring Ottawa largely on foot.

The highlight of our first night was definitely the meal.  On Graydyn's recommendation we went to Atelier, which is a molecular gastro restaurant in Ottawa.  Definitely a new experience for Euphy and I, and it was all we could talk about on the way home.

The next day was ours to explore Ottawa... sort of.  We struck out from our hotel only to find our path blocked by a marathon.  I guess I should really look up events in the towns I'm visiting before I get there.  We were eventually able to navigate around the race and get across the bridge to Ottawa, but by that time it was raining hard, and we were sharing a small umbrella.  It took us well over an hour just to get to Ottawa and find a restaurant for breakfast, at which point we were each soaked on one half of our bodies.  We managed to make our way to the Parliament buildings though, and killed a bit of time in a nearby mall.  By the afternoon the weather had improved dramatically and we spent a lot of time just wandering around by the river.  The day started out rough, but we made the best of it.

Monday was largely a travel day.  We made our way down to the airport in Ottawa and then got on our flight to Whitehorse.  There's a stopover in Yellowknife just to refuel, but all told it's about 7 hours of travel.  Fortunately you get a bit of that back with the 3 hour time difference, so it was still the afternoon by the time we got in.  Our first stop here in Whitehorse is Sundog Retreat.  It's actually about 20-30 minutes north of Whitehorse, so it's pretty remote, and the night skies have been goregous!

I hope you like that picture everyone, it's all you're going to get for now.  My upload speeds are pretty dreadful here, and on the tablet I can't quickly resize images for speedy upload.  Any more than that and I'd be old and grey by the time I got this post posted.  I'll try to get more up later.

Yesterday morning a guide from Sundog showed us around Whitehorse.  We wrapped up the tour at Miles Canyon, just south of the city.  It's an incredibly beautiful place and I can't wait to get some picture up.  After the tour our guide Ken dropped us at Budget where we had a rental car waiting for us.  We'll have that for the rest of the trip, which is going to really help; I really don't think we could see everything we wanted up here without a car.

We drove out to a small museum near the airport called Beringia, which focuses on the animals of the ice age that crossed the land bridge from Asia.  For a small facility it was incredibly well put together and had a wealth of interesting information.

After our time there we headed out to Muktuk Adventures for a tour and dinner.  Muktuk is run by a retired Musher (sled-dog racer) who still trains teams, but also takes on retired or injured dogs to give them a happy place to spend their non-racing lives.  There are over 100 sled dogs on the property... I'm still not entirely clear on how I managed to get Euphemia to leave.  After a dinner of Arctic Char, Caribou sausage, Elk, and Bison, we headed back here to get a glimpse of the Aurora.  We've been fortunate that the night skies have been clear, but unfortunately the Northern Lights haven't been putting on much of a show the last couple days.  Hoping for better luck as soon as I'm done writing this.

Today was spent mostly on the road.  My driver's licence expired at the end of August, and so I've just got the temporary paper one... in Toronto.  So yeah, Euphy has had to do ALL the driving.  She's been a trooper about it though.  We drove north today along the Klondike Highway and just stopped at any place that looked interesting and we could safely pull off the road.  Brilliant way to do a road trip really.  The scenery up here is beautiful and it was a great way to spend the day.  Unfortunately we wrapped that up with a trip down a poorly maintained road that I (erroneously) told Euphy we could manage.  It turned out to be a bit much for the little Focus we had rented and we bailed half way down the road... and had to go find a car wash.  Good times.

Well, I apologize for glossing over the many adventures we've been having, but this little keyboard is cramping my hands.  With any luck our access to WiFi will be more reliable going forward and I'll be able to post more frequent (and thorough) updates.  For now though, night has fallen and I'm going to go see if I can spot some fire in the sky.

McLean's Auto Salvage

Hello again my friends!  I am, as usual, a little late on this one, but I wanted to share some pictures from a recent photo adventure that I went on.  It was a couple weeks ago, but I'm only now getting around to posting these because, well, I'm very lazy.

Dad and I went out with Brian and his Band of Merry Photographers, many of whom were with us for the Burwash adventure that I posted about a couple months ago.  This particular trip was a little closer to home though.  We went out to McLean's Auto Salvage, near Rockwood (outside of Guelph.)  It's quite an interesting place; from what I can gather they've been operating as an auto salvage yard for decades, but they aren't doing a ton of business anymore.  It's a huge piece of land, and the old cars are scattered through various fields which are separated by small stands of trees.  The result is a forest of old, derelict vehicles, many of which predate me.  It's become a real attraction for local photographers like my friends and travelling companions who have a passion for the old and abandoned.  What's really fantastic about this place is that the owners are quite happy to let us wander around their property taking photos of the old treasures scattered throughout.  In searching for information of McLean's before we went out there I found several other site from groups who went out there to hone their craft.  What started as a couple guys running a salvage yard has turned into a photographer's playground, and through that the owners have become real patrons of the arts.  I wouldn't blame them for a moment if they wanted to start charging an entrance fee to reap a little profit from this growing attraction, but no suggestion of the sort was ever made.

I've collected some of my favourite shots from the day and I'll put them here for you all to enjoy.  As usual I've scaled these down to prevent taking all day uploading them, but if you'd like a full-sized image I'm always happy to provide those upon request.  Enjoy!

It's funny and/or ridiculous, but I think this is my favourite shot from the day... and the salvage is entirely in the out-of-focus background.

Okay, something rusty, that's more like it.

I love this old Ford.

This was a common site throughout the day.  Any car with its windows at least mostly intact seemed to act as a kind of greenhouse, and the plans were loving it.

As you can see it was a beautiful day.

Safety is serious business.

Another greenhouse car.  Some of these even had a bit of condensation on the windows.  It's pretty obvious that the plants in this car were in their element.

I liked the moss all over the seat.  Euphy has informed me that this is, in fact, "gross."  I stand corrected.

A symbol of a long-lost era.  Even more so now.

There were some newer vehicles on the property; testament to the fact that this is still a functioning salvage yard.  Dad dug around in a minivan and found an incredible series of old books.  We actually tracked down one of the owners and bought them from him.

I love the irony of this sticker.

Got a clue?

I'm pretty sure everyone who has ever visited here has taken a picture of this car.  The eagle-eyed among you will notice that there is a TREE growing clear through the roof.  The eventual fate of all things we build.  Nature prevails.

There was some pretty heavy equipment laying around the site.

So there you have it folks.  Hope you enjoyed my effort.  I certainly enjoyed getting those shots.  It was a great opportunity for me to practice my photography.  In fact, that was the first time I threw my camera in full Manual mode and just took the time to play with the settings and get things (occasionally) right.  All in all it was a great learning experience.

I've been playing around a lot with my new camera.  On Brian's suggestion I've even been taking it downtown to work with me and heading out to shoot on my lunch break.  I'll make a post in the near future with a collection of the photos I've manage to capture in my practice sessions.  Until then, be safe, be happy, and enjoy this lovely Canada Day!

Burwash

Hi Everybody!

Remember this place?  I know, nothing at all in 2013... not a spectacular display of the blogger's art I'm afraid.  I recently got back from a weekend photography trip and I thought that I'd resurrect this old blog as a way of sharing a few of my photos.  I've been in the (bad) habit of only occasionally throwing a few photos up on Facebook and calling it a day, but I know that not everyone books faces, so this is probably a better way to reach more of you.  Also I think if you post a photo on Facebook they own every creative thought you have from that point forward.  I really should read those user agreements...

Anyway!  Like I said, I just got back from a trip that focused entirely on photography.  Those of you who know my good buddy Richard will know that his dad is quite the photographer, and he regularly puts together photography expeditions.  Brian was kind enough to invite my dad and I out to their 2nd annual trip to Burwash, a now-extinct town outside of Sudbury.  It was home to Camp Bison, a minimum security prison that shut down in the 70s.  There's no trace of the town, but the shell of the old prison still remains and makes for a very interesting subject.

I've just picked up a new camera, a Pentax K-5 II, and this trip was an amazing opportunity to start getting used to it.  I took quite a few shots, but I'll share a handful of my favourite ones with you here.  These are all shrunk down so that they don't take all night to upload, but I'm more than happy to provide full sized images if anyone happens to take a fancy to one.

The landscape is undeniably Northern Ontario.

Approach to the prison...

...which has seen better days.

The mattresses could use a bit of patching up.

Nothing even remotely creepy about this hallway.

Something to keep in mind if you're planning to visit this place - there are holes in the floor.  At this time of year everything in the (completely dark) basement was frozen over, though I'm not sure how deep these holes are, or how thick the ice is.  I almost went through one that was partially covered in plywood.

I didn't stop for a haircut.

As Richard so ably demonstrates, the floors of the lower levels were under varying amounts of water.  What you can't really tell is that there was a layer of ice under the water.  Our rubber boots kept us comfortable, but you always had to watch your step.

Some commie at the bar.

I liked the reflection I got with this shot.

I thought the moss reclaiming this table was cool.  Euphy informed me that I was wrong and that it is, in fact, gross.

We got a few breaks in the clouds, which was awesome.  Just the fact that we didn't get rained on was a fantastic stroke of luck for this time of year.

Not sure how many more winters this poor old building has left before the outer layer of bricks is completely stripped away.

I love the colour in this shot.

Richard, Dad, and I climbed up to a high point of land to get this great perspective of the prison.

Up on the second floor there was an old theater.  You can actually get up into what used to be the projection room and look down into this room.  There's still a bit of the old parquet flooring left.

Despite a 5km hike from a point that was already in the middle of nowhere the place was covered in graffiti.  Most of it poorly done.  I'm not sure what kind of person carries paint all that way just to spray a crude rendition of a penis onto a crumbling wall, but I have a number of disparaging opinions about their mental state.

I love the tenacity of these little trees.  Sadly, what we're likely looking at here is the death of this building.  I strongly suspect that these guys will eventually grow large enough to bring the roof down, and I don't image the rest of the building will last very long after that.

I appear to have forgotten about the building I was standing on.  That Northern landscape is too much to resist.  I very much want to return in the Fall to get the leaves when they're changing colour.

A couple of bricks appear to have fallen on this roof.  A testament to how well it was built.

It was pitch-black in the basement, but Richard held a flashlight for me so that I could attempt a few long-exposure shots.  I love this kind of thing.

So there you have it folks.  I hope you enjoyed my little show.  If anyone would like to see the whole collection I'd be happy to give a presentation.  I had a great time out there and would happily go up that way again.  I was fortunate enough to be travelling with a great group of guys who were more than willing to share their photos and their experience with me and it made for an amazing trip.  Also, my new camera rocks.

I won't pretend that I'm going to get back to the prolific writing that marked the peak of this blog's life, but I'll try to get a few more things up in the future.  Euphy has asked me to get some of our wedding photos up, so you can expect at least one more post in the near future.  For now, be well, and I hope to see you all again soon.