"Home" to Tuk after a busy Christmas vacation... with an MASc to my name!

I'm back to Tuk and all settled in...

The trip from Toronto to Inuvik went flawlessly... We had a direct flight from Toronto to Edmonton, and arrived in Edmonton at about 10am. The bags however, took over an hour to come out of the luggage return area... Someone must have been on a long coffee break, and I wasn't happy because I was itching to go to the West Edmonton Mall (WEM). We stayed at the Westin in downtown Edmonton where I got a corporate rate through work. Then we took public transit to the WEM after having a bite to eat at Wok Box. At the mall we looked around at all of the stores, and all of the amusements. There is a skating rink, mini golf, amusement park, and waterpark, amongst other things. We decided to go to the waterpark, where we got in for half price for some reason (maybe we looked like kids?).

At the waterpark there are about 12 different slides, and we did all of them that were open, as well as the wave pool. It was great fun and we spent about 3 hours there. After that, Deon had our picture taken where we were dressed up in historical costumes (he was a mountie, I was a southern Belle...). It will look funny on the wall because it is old fashioned looking.

We had greek food in the food court for dinner, and then went back to the hotel where we did some more swimming in the hotel's pool. It was early to bed because we had to leave at 5:45 to catch our plane to the north. We flew from Edmonton to Yellowknife, where we parted ways. My stopover in Yellowknife was an hour, whereas Deon's was 3 hours. I got back to Inuvik at about 2pm, after we sat on the runway in YK for an hour waiting for the plane to be de-iced.

Once in Inuvik, I decided to check out the possibility of taking a taxi back to Tuk on the ice road rather than waiting for 4 hours for my flight to depart. I was able to take a taxi (a big van) along with two other people from Tuk to Inuvik in the afternoon. We left at about 4pm, and at 4:30pm, the driver said "@#*! I forgot something!" so he turned around and we drove back to Inuvik. Turns out the "something" he forgot was the 3rd person. Ahah, only in the north.

So the trip down the ice road wasn't too scary. It was dark for most of the time so I couldn't see what was going on. The road really isn't slippery because it's covered in snow, and you drive about 100km/h. Of course, since it is on a river there are lots of twists and turns. The part that gets a bit scary is where the river meets the ocean, as there are many bumps in this section due to the water movement and wave action near the river's mouth. There was one crack in the ice close to Tuk, which was marked with some stakes with red reflectors on them. You just drive fast over it and you're fine. The reason it is fine is because there is 3 feet of ice beneath, so it's not an issue of the ice breaking.

At any rate, the government of the NWT is always out doing inspections and closes it when it's not safe, so you needn't worry. It was a relief to see the pingos and the lights of Tuk after 2.5 hours of being on the road, in the dark with nothing to see.