Day Twenty - Northern Sky Lodge

I slept like a log last night, it was snowing all night and cloudy so no chance of catching the lights.

I was at breakfast soon after 8am and was rewarded with steaming hot coffee.

Today I took a walk in the woods around the lodge, hoping to spot some wildlife.  There are some well trodden paths, and while they are covered with fresh snow, they are quite packed underneath, so easily walkable if you stick to the trail.  I wandered a bit, stopping and looking and listening for anything living, but there was just me.  Lots of animal tracks, what looked like moose, hare and possibly lynx, but only tracks.  It started snowing quite heavily again, so I put my camera away and wandered back to the lodge.  I had totally overdressed and was roasting, it's about 1 degree here, much warmer than I am used to.  I had to stop and take my toe warmers out because my feet were melting.
I pottered about my room, downloaded photos and caught up on the happenings around the world.

Then I thought I should get something to eat, so I headed in to Fairbanks to the local Safeway, and got some salads, cold meat and a Mac n cheese for tomorrow night's dinner.

Back at the lodge, it had stopped snowing but was cloudy and didn't look promising for lights.  I had all my gear ready anyway, but didn't set the alarm.  However I was woken about 2am with polite knocking on my door, the lights were out and my fellow guests were kind enough to wake me.  I scrambled into warm clothes, grabbed my camera and tripod and headed to my favourite spot.

Another lovely show from Aurora.



It was all over by about 3am and we all trouped off to bed.

I took a while to get back to sleep as I was a bit cold, but I eventually nodded off and slept til 8am, just in time for hot coffee.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Nine - The Iditerod

Image
We started the day early with a 5am coffee in our room.  Belinda is still on Toronto time and I was awake as well. We have nice digs here, but one of us is messy and one of us is tidy.  Guess which is my bed.  Hint: it's the far one. We all gathered downstairs in the lobby to have breakfast together at 7.30am, the first chance to meet the whole team that we'll be spending the next 10 days with. We have Brett and Claire who are South Africans now living in Brisbane.  Brett has run various airlines around the world, only every in tropical countries, and is currently CEO of Soloman Airlines Limited.  Claire is a Doctor, doing lab/pathology work for the central lab for Queensland.  So they are finding this weather ridiculously cold. Meena is a lawyer and works for NZ Post, Alistair works in IT for a company in Wellington and they both were awarded/gifted the trip by HP, I believe in some sort of incentive/reward scheme. Kevin is from Montgomery Alabama...
Read more

Day Nineteen - Fairbanks and the North Pole

Image
I woke about 8am after my lateness getting to bed.  Breakfast is between 8am and 10am, so I took a leisurely shower and sorted my rats nest of a bag into some sort of order.  We had to bring a duffle to make them easier to pack into the vehicles, which works for stowing bags, but with one big empty space, it becomes a jumble in no time at all and you can't find anything. Breakfast was good, cheesy scrambled egg with bacon, cereals, a variety of toast and muffins etc.  My only complaint was the coffee was lukewarm.  I must get their earlier tomorrow. I pottered about for a bit, washed some essentials, and then headed out.  The town of North Pole is a short distance away from Fairbanks, and it has to be done really. I hate selfies, but I had to on this occasion.   I was amused to see the same toilet paper hoarding is happening in Santa's home too.  Maybe he's stockpiling for Christmas! Toilet paper shelves empty at the North Pole.  Wha...
Read more

Day Eighteen - Coldfoot to Fairbanks

Image
Some  more picks of Coldfoot, this time the diner/truckstop. Kevin, standing next to the anti-freeze selection The bar, which is not open at the moment. They've had some snow recently Last day today.  We are flying back to Fairbanks, if the weather is kind to us.  It has been snowing lightly on and off, and there is cloud but quite a high ceiling.  So we are hopeful of a flight, because another 6 1/2 hours of wheels rolling is not appealing. One of the hardest things to cope with in the cold is managing your layers, as we get out of the van and need to layer up, and get back in the van and need to strip down else we melt.  So no matter how careful you are, or how organised you try to be, you always drop a glove, or forget which pocket you put the lens cap in, or can't find your hat.   It's cosy, that's for sure ! Our flights are scheduled for 2pm and 3pm, we weigh too much and have too much gear to all go on the same flight....
Read more