A trip to Yellowknife had been on the table for quite awhile; it is a personal goal of ours to visit all corners of our country, and the Northwest Territories marked the 12th province/territory.
One of the main reasons people come to Yellowknife is undoubtedly to see the northern lights, or aurora borealis. I have personally never seen them before, but some have sent pictures from trips to Iceland and northern Ontario, and I knew this was something I wanted to see at least once in my life.
An hour before our flight to Yellowknife, we received a message saying our flight, which was only offered once a day, was cancelled. Panic ensued, until we were able to clarify it was only rerouting to Fort McMurray for a fuel-up before continuing to the original destination.
The minute we stepped off the plane in Yellowknife, my nostrils froze. We collected our luggage, found our B&B, and picked up some pizza from the only place in town that was still open, Bruno's.
We headed out to try and see the northern lights for the first time; this is my experimenting with the camera settings and being blinded by someone's rear lights. When we got back, my dad, "It's nothing special. Just looks like smoke."
The next morning we ventured to hiking paths and walked over frozen lakes. I've never had good circulation to my extremities, so I started freezing at this point. Falling into a ditch and getting snow inside my boots also didn't help my case.
The view from the Bush Pilots Monument.
We got lunch at the nearby Dancing Moose Cafe.
The activity that night was low, so after a home-cooked dinner, we decided to head to bed early for a good nights sleep.
The next day, we headed out to see the Legislative Assembly. It has become somewhat of a tradition to pay a visit to each capital city and their respective government buildings, and we left with many pins from the tour guide.
After a lunch of pho at A Taste of Saigon, we decided to walk to the visitor's centre.
There was a skating rink on the lake outside, and a marked path that brought you straight across Frame Lake.
Everything electronic dies more quickly in extreme cold. On our first night in Yellowknife, I noticed my watch had suddenly stopped, but initially thought the battery had died as it had been running on the same battery for nearly 3 years. Likewise, my phone died instantly when brought out into the cold, and my camera battery drained at a significantly faster rate when we were outdoors. This might have contributed to the lack of photos when outdoors; also freezing fingers and eyelashes that got stuck to the viewfinder made taking photos much less appealing.
Later that night, we headed out again to try and catch the aurora.
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