Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

Here is the view from our window at the place we’re staying at in St. Thomas – not too shabby:

– Meredith

So, Dave’s been contracting for several weeks now, and I am starting my new job on Monday.  There’s just enough time before then for one last quick trip!  We’re heading off today to St. Thomas and we’ll be back on Sunday.  We’ll post some pics while we’re gone.

– Meredith

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

Better late than never, my gallery of pictures from our trip to the Southwest in October is now up. 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

Many thanks to those of you who submitted captions for the contest. There were some clever and funny entries, some were crude (not that that matters I guess), I admit that there were one or two I didn’t get, and one person tried to slip in after the deadline (you know who you are!). After much deliberation, the winner is Courtney with “Nice coat. If that’s not faux I’ll have to pelt you!”. Points for the only entry with a double entendre. Meredith says its “beary punny.” Ouch. In spite of that bad pun, I will give a special recognition to Meredith’s topical paraphrasing of Smokey Bear’s famous line, “Only you can prevent climate change. Only YOU.” I really liked that but she is ineligible for obvious reasons. Rules are rules you know and I have to maintain my integrity.

Courtney gets to pick any picture that’s in the blog galleries and I’ll make an archival print (suitable for framing!) up to 12″x18″ for her . Galleries from this trip and from our trip to the Southwest are still forthcoming so stay tuned.

I had fun with this. If I find another picture that needs a caption put to it, we’ll do it again. Thanks!

– Dave

I’ll put this up for completeness since we’ve done it for all the places on all the other trips this year. The Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg is very nice and my room was great but the view? Well…

– 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