As you approach Yellowknife….you start to find yourself on rock, with lots of rock on either side of the road…if my geology lessons from school are remembered correctly, this is pre-Cambrian rock…and is, I think, part of the Canadian Shield. Much of that rock is pink in color…and since the rock has been used to create the pavement…the road itself tends to be pink…
on the right hand side of the highway is a large lake, called ‘Long Lake’, with a public park and beach that looks like any public lakeside beach anywhere on the continent….
on the left hand side, is the airport. This vintage plan is mounted at the airports entrance….if you’ve ever watched the show ‘Ice Pilots’ on the History network…this is the airport featured in that show. I took the above picture from the RV park which is situated right across the street…
Here is Ernie enjoying a drink and sitting where he would be looking directly at the plane…this was a large RV park, very spread out because, as you can see, it is build upon this rock, so the sites were in little nooks and crannies which were few and far between. We were put right down beside the highway, I think because we’d asked for powered sites…I won’t do that next time…
there were far more scenic spots within the RV park….here you are looking back towards that public beach, and you can see the airport buildings in the background.
from the same spot, this is Long Lake, looking in the other direction…more like one would expect…I don’t know what I expected, but water skiers and personal watercraft certainly weren’t it! You can see the color of the rock…
this was the shower facility in the park…with an information kiosk on the right….
this shot just shows the general landscape of very old, worn rock with plants growing where they can take root.
and there, in the distance is part of the skyline of the city of Yellowknife. Anyone who has followed my blog knows we don’t like cities and spent as little time as possible in them….which is why I don’t seem to have any pictures of the city itself even though parts of it, especially the old part…was very interesting, reminding me of pictures I’ve seen from Newfoundland and the Maritimes as the houses were all built up on bare rock.
here is another view of another part of the city, but not the downtown core itself. There were lots of little lakes, all with walking paths…in fact it was obvious that the people of Yellowknife make the most of their short summer…you’ve heard the old adage ‘make hay while the sunshine’, well, I think, up there, it is ‘play while the sunshine's’ because in the evenings the place came alive with people out and about pretty much all night long – another reason for not staying close to the highway in the RV Park!
There was a very nice Visitor’s center with a small lake adjacent to it where I was surprised to see these Eared Grebe…the closest I’ve ever been able to get to one. I seem to remember we drove into down the first evening to take advantage of one of the big grocery stores…there was pretty much every store you could hope for…including Wal-Mart…
Next morning, Dave and Dianna headed back into the city to explore (they like cities), and we headed further east along what is called the ‘Ingraham Trail’, until it just ended. Apparently, a number of years ago there were plans to extend the road down into Saskatchewan, making a circle route…but those plans, or at least the money for them, fell through and so the road simply ends.
There are a number of Territorial Parks along the Ingraham Trail, including several campgrounds…something to keep in mind for those of us ‘non city’ people. We decided to throw the canoe in at this particular lake…
this is just one small corner of this very large lake….we stuck to the shallows as this was a rather daunting lake, and besides, the shallows are where you see the birds…but in this case it also gave us heart failure on more than one occasion as those Northern Pike, which are huge fish, also like to lay in the shallows, and when they are disturbed they suddenly splash and it is like a crocodile coming out of the water…
We did see these Yellowlegs Sandpiper…Lesser’s I think..
and, of course, Spotted Sandpipers….I swear, is there any body of water where Spotted Sandpipers aren’t found!
and of course some ducks…including these Northern Shovelers….
and so brings to an end the pictures copied from the first saved CD of this trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment