That's All Folks

I'm just heading into four night shifts and they will be my last up here. I hope only for this trip but I don't have any big plans once I leave. I finished these on Saturday morning and then I fly out on Sunday at 1:30ish. I transfer in Edmonton and arrive at Pearson at 6:54 a.m. on Monday. The time has flown by and I can't believe I'm coming home already. I guess it's time to start thinking about real life :)

Tuktoyaktuk and the Ice Road

The Big City of Tuk

Yesterday five of the nurses and my preceptors husband and I took a long road trip up to a community about 200 km north for Inuvik. My preceptor Sharon and her husband Earl have a hummer here and it was a very nice ride up. Apparently the ice road can get pretty bumpy and uneven, expecially where it turns into the ocean, but our ride was very smooth (the first time I can say I was glad to ride in a hummer).

Soura, Sharon, Robyn, Chantale, Alana and me at the turnoff for Aklavik (another small community outside of Inuvik)

The others nurses who went were Alana, Robyn, Soura, and Chantale. This picture is really only about 30 minutes into our two hour drive up.
Tuk, as it is more commonly called here, supposedly has a population of about 850 but anyone from here says it's more like 300-400. It has a grocery store with surprising selection (we spent about 15 minutes just exploring it). You can expect to pay $18.99 for 6 710 mL bottles of pop, or $8.19 for one two L bottle. Awesome.

After we spent some time in the Northern store, we went out to the arctic ocean. It was so cool to be able to look out and just see nothing from ice for as far as you could see. We all took pictures just standing on the ocean. How many people can say they've done that!

 After the ocean, we decided to try to get into the community ice freezers, which is a system of underground rooms where people used to and still do sometimes, keep meat. We had called Joanne (of Joanne's taxi-the only taxi in Tuk) the day before but the person who answered the phone said "she's too drunk to come to the phone right now". Apparently she is the one who usually ahs the keys to get into the freezer, but she obviously couldn't help us in her inebriated state. Luckily when we drove by the door was open and there were two men down working in the freezers and they had big garage lights with them! They let us climb the 32 feet down into the freezers and we were able to look around a get a lot of pictures. It was SO cool down there because you could see the layers of permafrost in the walls and the ceiling was covered in these really fine, beautiful ice crystals.

The hole that you have to climb down.

Me and Robyn in the freezer!

The Pingos

After the freezers we really just started to head back to Inuvik. We stopped to look at the Pingos for a bit. Pingos are some sort of weird living organism that bursts up through the permafrost and they grow something like 1/10th of an inch a year or something really insignificant. But obviously over lots of years they get big.







The people who live up here think that the show the Ice Road Truckers in just completely ridiculous because everyone they know drives on the ice road all the time. We had someone at the hospital this week from Tuk and we told her we were going up to see it. She was like " Why would you want to go there? You want to see the Pingos? buy yourself a 33 cent postcard and see them. And those freezers! You'll never get the stink from them out of your clothes. If you're going to go, you better wear something old at least." Just hilarious the difference in views that people who live there have compared to all of us tourists.

On our way home we stopped and took some pictures with the big cracks in the road. Some places the ice had actually created an overriding area on top of itself because it had shifted so much. Earl reassured me that the ice was about 8 feet thick but I was still skeptical. Especially after jokingly putting my foot onto one of the cracks and having it go through! (not to water but it still freaked me out a little bit).

The Ice Road

On our way home-it was really sunny!

Our Ice Road Truck

Sharon and Earl, our tour guide and truck driver!

The Northern Lights and The Sailboat and the Sea

Last night I went out to see the Northern Lights. The solar flare that happened a couple of days ago was supposed to makke them really bright. It was clear and I decided I'd go out to finally try to get some pictures. It was a really nice night and I put my iPod on and just wandered all over town. I went up to the edge of town in two directions and found some really good places to see them. It took me a while to figure out how to get pictures of them but I finally got a couple. Of course they were brightest and best before I figured it out. I actually saw them moving for the first time last night!

The long way home

I've just finished a long stretch of shifts with only one day off in between and I have a couple of days off now. I've been really lucky and it's been busy on the unit so I've gotten to see a lot of interesting things. I just came off of four nights and I slept all day! Now I have to try to get back into a daytime schedule because I work days on Thursday. I'm excited because on Friday I'm going up to Tuktoyaktuk-usually just called Tuk. It's about two hours north of here right on the arctic ocean. They have these cool geographical anomalies called Pingos which are just parts of land that rise up through the permafrost and look really cool. They also have ice freezers which are underground freezers made for storing food. They're about 30 feets below the surface and the pictures I've seen look really cool. I will make sure to take lots of pictures of my day trip! I'm going with my rpeceptor Sharon, her husband and a few other nurses Alana, Chantale and Robyn. I think it's going to be a really great day.

I also booked my flight home on Thursday! I fly out of here on the 18th around 1:30 and I'll get to Edmonton around 7:00 my time. I haven't actually booked a flight from Edmonton to Toronto but I plan to this week-hopefully I'll be able to get a deal and arrive sometime on Monday morning. My trip has been fantastic but I'm feeling ready to come back home. I will definitely think about coming up here again though!

I think I know snowmobiling isn't for me.

The Subarctic Tundra

The Reindeer Herd!

On Sunday I went snowmobiling for most of the day. I worked nights on Saturday, slept for a few hours and then left my house around 1:00 p.m. I went with my room mate Paul, one of the nurses Judy and one of the doctors Dinesh Mistry. I made it about 45 minutes away on my own but I had a wipe-out. I think my ski must have gone off the track just a little bit and I ended up slamming right into a tree. My skidoo was stuck and it took about 15 minutes and four of us to get it out. We went up and stopped at a place called Beer Hill, which is apparently where your supposed to stop for a beer-hence the name. We didn't take part in that part of the trip though and after the hill I gave up my skidoo to Dr. Mistry and rode on the back of Judy's. Anyway we went up past the tree line, across the arctic tundra and met up with the reindeer herder, who took us up to the herd! It was really cool-you could see them from really far away, just as this big black mass. Then when we were close we herded them closer to the reindeer station. The man we were with sung to them in Inuvaluit and it was really, really cool. He told us there were between 2500-4000 reindeer this year. We also saw wolf tracks which were HUGE. He told us they were probably from the alpha male who scouts out the territory, and that the wolf was probably the size of a cariboo-it's tracks were bigger than his hands!

After my wipe-out, I was really sore and I could barely walk when I got off my skidoo. All I kept thinking about was how much I wanted to be home and having a warm shower. When we finally made it home, I could barely make it up the few steps to get in the front door. It was one of the most uncomfortable things I have done. I'm glad that I did it though because it was so cool to see the tundra and all the reindeer. I think it was just too long of a trip for my first time, especially after having so little sleep. I have a bit of a cold now and I think it's probably from the exhaustion too.

Why do I let myself get talked into dog sitting?

Frank

Jane Doe

Jane with the stick that was bigger than her

The sun setting over the lake

Okay, I am just coming off of four nights so bear with me.
Dog sitting was pretty good. EXCEPT they ran away all the time. The backyard is fenced but both the dogs can escape whenever they feel like it and terrorize the neighbourhood. It doesn't help that Jane (the skinnier, cuddlier one) was an outdoor dog before she was adopted and she thinks she has the run of the land.
Frankie is the one that lookers fluffier and more serious. She's better behaved and only escaped maybe 4 times. Jane Doe is a big suck but she escaped almost everytime I let her out. Even when I was standing on the porch watching her and yelling at her.
One night, I was on my way into a night shift the next night so I stayed up pretty late and was heading to bed around 2. I thought, I'll just let the dogs out before I go to bed. So I let them out and about one minute later call them back. Jane comes running in. No Frank. She was totally AWOL and I couldn't find her. Plus it was 2 in the morning and I didn't have all that much energy to be looking. So around 4, still no Frank, I decide to leave the front door open, get up every couple of hours and hope that she comes back (her owner said that if the neighbours find her, they'll just let her back in).
So 6:30 comes around, still no Frank. 8:30 I wake up and Frank is in bed with me. THANKS A LOT.
What a jerk.
So then, Thursday morning rolls around. I was working nights on Wednesday so I just stopped by on my way home to let them out because their owners were coming home at 1:00. I let them out and Frank takes off again. I was exhausted and I did not want to wait 6 hours for her to come back. Next thing I know the neighbour is calling-"did you lose a dog?" So thank goodness I went and picked her up and brought her home. Then I'm on my way out the door and I think it smells not very good in here... Upon further investigation, I find a large pile of poop in the rec room upstairs. GREAT. Just what I was hoping for after working 12 hours and sleeping terribly because YOU RAN AWAY.

All in all, somewhat frustrating and still very nice. It was nice to have dog company and they were pretty well behaved minus the running away. and the one poo. I especially liked cuddling with Jane on the couch. :)

On Monday I came home not feeling well and I slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Then I went to bed around 10:30 because I had to work days yesterday morning. So I started to wake up...I thought "hm...must be close to 6:30 if I'm starting to wake up". It was 12:54. I was awake until 4:30. I am not exhausted. But I had to work tonight so I had to try to stay up late to be ready for nights again. Maybe I'm not cut out for nights and days?

Anyway, my day yesterday was hectic. Nights are nice because the pace is pretty slow and if someone comes in, usually your other patients are sleeping. Days are not like that. Obviously.

Okay-the real point of this post. I am dog/house sitting! YAY. I start on Friday until Thursday. She is the diabetic educator at the hospital and she has three dogs. She's taking one down to Calgary to have her cataracts removed and new lenses put in and I am staying at her house with her two other lovely dogs Jane Doe and Frank (both girls). They are adorable and I will post pictures when I see them!

I also went out last night because the northern lights were the brightest I've seen them. My new room mate came in from the hospital and said that he was going back out because they were really bright. We walked up behind the hospital and had the genius idea to cut across this big field/hill. By the time we made it about a quarter of the way, we realized our mistake-the snow wouldn't hold us up and I kept falling at least wasit deep. I was sure I wasn't going to be able to pick my feet up at least twice. By the time we made it out to the road where the street/hospital lights weren't as bright, the northern lights were gone. I have no idea how it happened, but it was sort of hilarious in a disappointing way. Long story short, no pictures yet.