Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

My gallery of pictures from my recent trip to Churchill, Canada is now up. It’s chock full of polar bears with a few sled dogs at the end. You can click here to see it or look at the list of galleries on the Photo Galleries page.

- Dave

Joe Lorenzini was one of the guys on the trip north to photograph polar bears. He’s a cool guy and a great photographer – check out his site here. Joe took some shots which better illustrate the “pirate ship” idea than I did. He’s kind enough to let me show them here:

Here is the shot of all the Canon cannons – I count 10 of them:

Here’s a shot from the other end with me in the foreground. Joe is right next to me. He used a fish-eye lens to get this:

Here’s a view from inside of everyone glued to their “portholes” ready to fire:

It’s enough to make me want to say, “Avast, me hearties! Yaaarrrr!!”

- Dave

To give you a taste of Churchill, here are a few miscellaneous shots around town that didn’t fit into other posts. Around the perimeter of town there are many signs like this one warning of dangers:

Churchill is a working grain port. There’s a railroad line that comes all the way north and stops at the grain elevators and storage that sit near the bay at the edge of town:

A view up the main street in Churchill from our hotel. If you think it looks gray, cold, and bleak, you’re right.

- Dave

Near the end of our time in Churchill, I was speaking with someone in one of the other groups who rode in another buggy near ours. They said that whenever we approached a bear, they saw all of our windows go down in unison and many long lenses poke out of the windows. They said it reminded them of a pirate ship turning broadside against another ship with all the cannons sticking out. I liked the sound of that. Next time, I’ll hoist the Jolly Roger on top of the buggy. And whenever I see a bear, I’ll say something like, “Yaarrr! Thar be man-eatin’ bears about” or something like that. I may even wear an eye patch.

Above: Ready, Aim, Fire! (and for my friends who think I’ve got a ton of camera gear and big lenses, you ain’t seen nothing. The 6 lenses you see in that picture are the hard-core stuff. At one point someone else in our group asked me where all my camera gear was. I said in a very small voice, “it all fits in my backpack on my back.” )

Above: Shooting outside the vehicle where it’s allowed closer to town. That’s Jim showing us his action-stance.

Above: Drinking our grog. We did a night drive on the buggy the evening before we left town. Dinner with wine was served. Not too shabby.

- Dave

- Dave

Today was our last day and, aside from logistics of packing up and checking out, the main event for me was the optional dog sledding. Four of our group did this and it was really fun. When we showed up, the dogs were chained and not in their harness. Once they saw us, they went nuts, jumping and yelping, moaning and whining in a desperate way. They definitely knew why we were there. The owner took each dog one at a time and hooked them up to the sled’s harness:

Once a dog was hooked into the harness, it calmed down with only a whimper here and there. These are working dogs in the most pure form: they just want to get hooked in and run with the pack. Here are the two lead dogs ready to go:

Once all the dogs (about 8 of them) were rigged up, off we went, one of us at a time on a trail that was about a 7 minute loop. Here are the dogs a second after “launch”:

Since there were only 4 of us, we each got to go twice. This was great for me since I could take my regular camera the first time and my video camera the second. Here’s a view from the sled as we went around a curve:

This next one shows me in the home stretch sitting in the sled. Look at the expressions on the dog’s faces. This is pure play-time for them.

After we were done, we went straight to the airport for our flight back to Winnipeg. That was it for Churchill and the polar bears. We’ve all discussed how we’ll do our next trip here.

- Dave

My window looked out behind the hotel. The hotel is at one end of the town and polar bears can come close to the hotel if they enter the town. We were warned repeatedly not to ever walk behind the hotel since bears are frequently back there. I haven’t seen any yet from the window though. Bummer.

- Dave

- Dave

Today we started with a tour of Churchill. Here is our stylin’ set of wheels:

One of the places we went was the “Bear Jail.” It’s a big Quonset hut that has traps/pens for about 30 bears. There were 13 there when we went. When a bear just won’t stop coming into town or somehow continually causes other issues, it is labeled a “problem bear” and is trapped and put in the bear jail. They stay there until there is enough ice on the Hudson Bay that they can release it. With that in place, it will instead then go out to the water for its food. Here is a sample bear trap:

And here is yours truly under the sign that gives the jail’s official name:

We also saw more sled dogs and puppies. They are very vocal dogs. Here’s a howler:

After the tour, we started our night buggy ride. It went from about 4pm to 9pm. There wasn’t much if any photography since it was so dark but under the moonlight, we were able to spot a bear, a few arctic hares, and an arctic fox. Not too shabby. On the drive back to the hotel the Northern Lights came out so we pulled the bus over and all got out to watch them. They formed a long green ribbon from one end of the sky to the other, swirling and dancing around. It was my first time seeing them and they were amazing. No photos of that either but now that we’re back at the hotel, they’ll wake us up if they see them again. Maybe I’ll have something to share in tomorrow night’s post.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we need to pack up to fly back to Winnipeg in the afternoon. Right before the flight though, a few of us have signed up for dog sledding. It sounds great but sounds very cold.

- Dave

- Dave