On our arrival, we booked into this bed and breakfast, the Beechmount.
We spent a few days in Winnipeg, exploring The Forks, the museum, visiting relatives, and shopping. On Oct. 25, David, Dad and I met with our Frontiers North tourmates at 6:15am at the airport. I don't know why we had to meet so early as we then had to stand around for a good hour before a bus came and picked us up to take us to a smaller airport North of the International terminal. We were thenshuffled into a 44 seat propellor plane and began our Northern adventure!
Upon our arrival in Churchill, we were met by +1 degree temperatures, wet snow, and rain. We were shuffled into another bus, driven by Simon the smiling Brit. He gave us an interpretive tour of the town and surrounding areas, including a bear jail and some bear traps.
The first day of our Tundra Buggy tour, we woke up to -7 temperatures with freezing rain and wind. Not great bear watching weather, but our guide was upbeat. We lucked out and got Glenn Hopfner as our guide, a real polar bear Rockstar (and I'm not kidding). We had tundra buggies pulling up beside us all day to get Glenn to sign his book for their passengers. Glenn has been touring with Tundra Buggy for 14 years.
The first bears we saw were a mother with her one or two cubs. We could only see one cub, but it is likely that there was another one snuggled underneath. These bears did not want to move, and stayed hunkered down on the snow as we stopped to view them. We saw a few more bears along the way, and then were treated to a show at the lunch break spot where a resident bear wandered between the buggies sniffing and poking around.
On our second tundra buggy day, we woke up to -10 weather, but it was clear and not snowing. It was actually a very nice day for viewing but we didn't see any bears until lunch time. We did a tour of the Hudson's Bay area, and stopped to look at a tanker wreck slowly disintegrating on the shore. At lunch time, we saw a large number of bears, including a monster male who will reach 1200 lbs once he fills up on ring seals over the winter.
Following the buggy tour, we were shuttled back to the airplane for our ride home. It was 9 at night as we came into Winnipeg, and the lights from the city were gorgeous. Another day and a half in Winnipeg saw us shopping and visiting with family. We attended a potluck supper at our cousin Carol's place, and disgusted the men by gathering all the women at 8pm to watch desperate Housewives in the den.
Our final vacation day was spent at the Assiniboine Zoo. Mom and Dad had an earlier flight, so David and I bussed it to Assiniboine park. It was a neat trip as we were 2 of about 8 people in the zoo. I got a few pictures of one animal I had been really wanting to see, the Artic Fox.
