Driving western Canada

□ Day 9 (20 Feb) Yellowknife (stay)

Today we were joining a dog-sledding experience from midday. Until then, free time. KEN and Naoto got going from the morning. Shinoda and Horibe slept soundly in the room until just before noon. Breakfast was the free self-service, as the day before.

After eating we explored the town. It was cold, so we wore our ski wear. The shops weren't open yet, so we headed for the outskirts. There was an ice road on Great Slave Lake here too. Walking along the ice road, there were houses built on the ice. Looking closely, their bases were like rafts, with rubber tyres fixed around them. In summer the houses must float on the lake, moored to the shore.

Next we went up a small hill. There's a monument, and it's a perfect place to look out over Yellowknife. We could clearly see the ice road continuing far into the distance.

We walked into town and looked around galleries and shopping malls. Yellowknife once prospered from gold mining, and now prospers from diamond mining. So there were diamond counters in several places. But of course they were expensive.

After each of us had lunch, we took a bus for the dog-sledding tour. All of the 30 or so participants were Japanese, and so was the guide. Everyone must have flown in; nobody else would have come by car. Aurora Village was in the forest about 30 minutes out of town. Tonight's aurora viewing would be at the same place. Lots of dogs were kept there, barking non-stop. Ten dogs pull a sled, and they seemed to be barking to make the case that they should be the ones pulling. Once the first sled run had left, the dogs that had been barking so much suddenly fell silent. Then when the sled came back they started barking furiously again.

We got on the second run. The dogs pulling were the same as on the first run, and a local Indigenous musher rode on the back of the sled to control it. Weren't they tired? The dogs were very strong. The sled went faster than we expected. Over bumps the sled even bounced up. This momentum was great fun. On uphills they paused, then pushed up through sheer guts. When we stopped once, one dog even had a pee. On downhills it was so fast it felt like flying. A precious experience.

After the dog sled we went to the campfire and toasted marshmallows. If you toast a marshmallow carefully without burning it, the outside turns golden brown, crisp outside and gooey inside, and it's delicious.

Next we enjoyed the tube slide. You climb a big snow slide, get into a tube and slide down. You pick up more speed than you'd expect. Not satisfied with sliding alone, we tried linking all four of us together and sliding down at once. But the person in front went down with too much force, and the back always broke away; it was quite hard. When we finally succeeded after many tries, it felt great.

We also got to try walking on the snow in snowshoes. A first for us, and quite tricky. On slopes we sometimes went flying.

Back in town, we went to the information centre and got certificates for crossing 60° north. They're quite proper certificates. In front of the information centre a flock of pure-white ptarmigans had gathered.

We agreed that we wanted to eat bison meat for dinner, and headed to "Bullocks' Bistro", which we had been told served that kind of meat. It's a small place, but inside there were signatures written all over, and it did seem like a top restaurant. There was no bison that day, but there was caribou and other dishes using unusual ingredients on the menu. But, but, it was far too expensive! Around 30 dollars a dish. And the menu said to pay a 20% tip. We ordered a few dishes at first, but the lady running the place told us each person had to order one dish. When we said it was too expensive to order, she said "Go to McDonald's then", and we left.

The next restaurant we went to was a place combined with a bar, reasonably priced, and everyone ordered what they liked, such as pizza and pasta.

Then at night we took the bus back to Aurora Village. There were huge numbers of Japanese people who had come to see the aurora; apparently about 150 had come. First a Japanese staff member explained all the facilities of Aurora Village. We couldn't really tell, but apparently the aurora was already out, if weak. They said that with a high-performance camera it would show up green. Until the aurora got stronger, we could warm up in tents of the Indigenous peoples called tipis. But tonight it wasn't that cold, apparently only around −10 °C. Yesterday had been colder. As a late-night snack we were given bison soup and bread. Good thing we didn't force ourselves to go and eat bison meat. The soup was full of ingredients, with proper chunks of meat. On the bread we spread maple margarine, a mix of maple syrup and margarine, which is quite good. We decided to spread lots on.

After the snack, we gazed at the night sky from a hill with a good view. Then in the north-east, a light that at first was only faintly visible gradually grew stronger. Cheers went up. Band-like light from green to white swayed, swirled and moved. Gradually the bands of aurora spread right overhead too, and we could see them changing shape. The mysterious light kept growing stronger and weaker, and held our eyes fixed. At that moment we even forgot how cold it was. We heard later that the aurora level that night was 4 on a scale of 5. Until the day before, the weather had been poor and the aurora had hardly been visible, so we were lucky to see a level 4. We didn't see one this time, but apparently a level 5 aurora "explodes".

After returning to the motel, we got in the Jeep and went to the ice road to see the aurora again. Drive 5 km out of town on the ice road and the city lights become much weaker. We saw the aurora. We couldn't see light as strong as earlier, but we could observe light that was moving.