Churchill

Since in so many ways Canada is not too dissimilar from America, I was really excited to venture to a more extreme part of the country. SR and I, having reached pretty much the end of the road system when we got to Thompson, Manitoba, then boarded a VIA Rail Canada train bound for the town of Churchill, on the Hudson Bay.

Slowly, the forest gave way to soggy, summer tundra, and the overnight journey deposited us in the place that is most famous for being the "polar bear capitol of the world." The small town's free Eskimo Museum certainly reflects that.

We weren't technically in the Arctic in Churchill, but it sure has that culture.

And plenty of bizarre things to visit that would never be left out there for people to explore and potentially injure themselves on anywhere else. We lucked out and got to stay with a terrific CouchSurfing host, D, who drove us all around the area, to sites such as the wreckage of Miss Piggy, a local plane that was routinely overloaded with cargo until it finally, one day, crashed...

...an old rocket launching building still full of hundreds of thousands of dollars of machinery and weird relics of the days when there was a military base at Churchill...

...the place from which they launch the mammoth "tundra buggies" that take tourists out to Wapusk National Park, primarily in the fall when the polar bears return to the ice forming on Hudson Bay to hunt seals...

...and on a walk out to the wreckage of the Ithaca, which was purposefully grounded by its crew more than 50 years ago when it began to have technical troubles leaving Churchill in a storm. Our host, D, happens to be employed by Parks Canada as a polar bear monitor (he spends all day outside watching any bears in the area to make sure they don't approach tourists to Churchill and Wapusk) and brought his firearm with him whenever we wandered outside of town, just in case. How's that for security?

The tundra scenery on the walk out to the ship, about 12 miles from town, was seriously slowing me down on my walk, as I wanted to photograph everything.

And the shipwreck itself was really impressive. There are no official regulations or protections around it, and we could have climbed up into it as we did Miss Piggy, but it was so sketchy and dilapidated that we weren't even tempted.

One big reason for walking right up to the Ithaca during low tide, though, was that it technically sits in Nunavut waters. So visiting the Ithaca means I've technically been to Nunavut, which was the only Canadian province/territory I'd not had on my summer-in-Canada itinerary due to the exorbitant cost of getting there. This was an essentially free solution that will allow me to say, at the end of the summer that I've been to every province/territory of Canada this year. Just a silly, but fun and satisfying, boast. For now, Nunavut is the 8th province/territory I've hit so far.

D, with his professionally trained eye, spotted a polar bear WAY off in the distance, which even through his binoculars just looked like a big white rock to me. Still, hey, we saw one, even in the off-season! On the opposite end of the size spectrum, nearly as impressive as the enormous shipwreck is the tundra flora, with everything writ in miniature, including this, the smallest willow species in Canada.

Back in town, we spent a good deal of time at Cape Mary, watching dozens of Beluga whales frolic in the Hudson and in the Churchill River estuary. We borrowed D's kayak and paddled out into the estuary but didn't see any whales at that time, and it was too splashy and windy to have risked trying to take a picture anyway. (Look for the white bit just left of center in the picture below--that's not a wave, but a beluga!)

D also showed us maybe the best community garden I've ever seen: the plots are planted in old tires from the tundra buggies!

First Nation culture is also a strong presence this far north, and a beautiful inukshuk (basically a cairn, but constructed in the shape of person and traditionally used to communicate much more than just a hiking route) decorates the town beach here.

After all the polar bear warnings around town...

...and the amount of time we spent at Cape Mary's, where they tend to lurk (and where someone took the time to carve into the rock what they think of the often rainy, windy spot, but must have found a worse one before they got to the final E), we were treated to one final sight...

...of another polar bear. Still very far in the distance, but this time at least recognizable to us as a bear, and I was able to get a picture of it through a pair of binoculars.

And so we left Churchill happy campers, back south on the train to Thompson to retrieve the car and continue west to Canadian province/territory #9: Saskatchewan!