Change In Plans

This short post is about our first day off the grid in Churchill, Manitoba.

Technically, Churchill is “at the end of the grid” instead of “off the grid.” The Canadian power system runs as far north as here, and then stops. Roads, on the other hand, stop about 200 miles south of Churchill, so the only ways to get here are by rail or air. There is no cell-phone service. It is as isolated in reality, about 600 miles north of Winnipeg (as the crow flies, about 1,100 miles on the train), as it looked on the Planet Earth video.

We met up with our tour group at 6:45 this morning, waited and moved around Winnipeg airport for an hour, and were airborne in a charter plane by about 8:00. While we were at the airoprt, the kids and I had the quintessential Canadian experience of Tim Horton’s “TimBits” for breakfast. They are like Dunkin Munchkins, but with a lot more cultural significance (I gather).

The plane was an ancient (early 1970s) turboprop, which did not reassure India, the nervous flier. The windows frosted over immediately upon takeoff, so we couldn’t see the terrain beneath us. We flew for just over two hours, and landed in Churchill in a snow flurry a little after 10am. It is not particularly cold (just above freezing), but you get a real sense of the tundra.

We are somehow affiliated with a tour group, so we started our adventure with a bus tour of the village of Churchill. Churchill has about 750 residents, so the tour was short: grocery store, Catholic Church, railroad tracks, Anglican Church, all-purpose community building, liquor store. Our guide promised to show us the grain silo tomorrow. We were instructed to check into out hotel and report for lunch at the Churchill Motel before noon. Our hotel is the Tundra Inn, which is comfortable but motel like. The shampoo in the showers comes in a little sachet. This is the nicest place in town.

We went for a nice walk down to the shore of Hudson Bay, and looked out at the black water.
I put my hands in, and affirmed that it is very cold. Difficult to tell how long it will be until it freezes, but until then there are a lot of polar bears waiting around near Churchill.

After sitting with the tour group for a pre-packaged soup and sandwich lunch, we decided to take our experience into our own hands.

We had originally been scheduled to go dog sledding on Sunday, but India persuaded the nice people at BlueSkyMush to move us up to this afternoon. There is no snow, so the dogs were hitched to a home-made cart instead. Gerald, the owner and sled driver, said he built the cart about 5 years ago, as the freeze and the snow got consistently later.

Zola and Charlsi had a great time playing with the dogs, and Zola got to drive the sled/cart with Gerald. India, LC, and I rode in the cart and admired the dogs as they bounded along in the mud and slush. The conventional wisdom is that sled dogs are happiest when they are pulling a sled; this appeared to be true with our dogs.

Overall, it was a terrific afternoon in the weak Northern Manitoban sun. Gerald and his wife, Jennifer, were gracious hosts and good company, and they are great ambassadors for Churchill.

Tomorrow morning we get up very early, and spend the day riding around in a tundra vehicle, looking for polar bears. Many of the other visitors we have spoken to saw polar bears on their game drives, so we are optimistic.

This far, Churchill has been interesting.