Fort Simpson Fire Dogs

All the fire hydrants in Fort Simpson are painted as dogs, I really like them! Josh says he's seen them painted up as other animals in some other communities.

Sunset on the Mackenzie

Air Tindi overnights a Caravan in Fort Simpson, (that's the link to Wikipedia but there's tons more info if you Google it.) I like to go for a walk after work, there's a road that goes along the cliff above the river, and there was a Coast Guard ship there one evening. If you go the other direction to where the ship was, you get to the Papal site. The Pope was supposed to visit in 1984, but couldn't get there because of the weather and eventually came in 1989, I guess the weather doesn't care who is supposed to be coming! I should point that out to our passengers next time they complain about being stuck! The first picture is where we stay at the Deh Cho suites, it's a pretty cushy suite with a kitchen and everything. Our room is on the back corner and overlooks the Fort Simpson Island airport, but we use the Goverment airport up the hill from town.

I took these pictures a while ago, now it's already dark before we even leave Yellowknife.

The Nieces

These are my nieces that we went to visit in France - Elisabeth, Alexandra and Mary. It turns out that these are the same names in the same order as Queen Elizabeth II, as far as I know that was pure coincidence. Elisabeth and Alexandra kindly shared Elisabeth's room so that we could sleep in Alexandra's. They have really nice rooms on the third floor, although Alexandra's windows open right next to the church bell that starts ringing at 7am! I think they're really lucky to live in that house.

I love the picture of the pyramid, I must have been napping when they did it because I never saw it - stupid jet lag!

Catch up mode - again.

I'm not very consistent at this blogging thing, which I find strange considering the amount of time I spend on my laptop. My excuse is that it takes photos a while to load, so I get easily sidetracked

while I'm waiting...

So now I'm going to try and post all the things I have saved up, in no particular order...

Caravan Captain

Take away three engines and about 35,000 lbs and you have my new ride at work. Even though it's a smaller plane, this is an upgrade because it's single pilot so I get to run the show. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's not! The Caravans are used mainly for sked flights and also charters, they are quite busy and my logbook is filling up quickly. It's getting dark earlier now and as soon as I get some night flights I'll meet all the requirements for an Airline license.

This is Training Captain Monica (you may remember her from a previous episode about our road trip) and I in Gameti during my line indoc, and then a picture of me starting up for my first flight in a looooong time all by myself! At some point Monica's ear seal leaked gel goop all down her neck, so she improvised with my empty peanut butter sandwich baggie. 'n Boer maak 'n plan! (Anybody got a good English equivalent for that?)

Inside the house

It was around 30 degrees most of the time we were there, but inside the house stayed nice and cool. Apparently it's important to leave the house as open as you can during the summer so the thick walls absorb heat and then they'll retain it so that during the winter you're just maintaining heat instead of trying to heat three feet thick stone walls. My favourite feature was the spiral wooden staircase with it's uneven steps, and also that there's a fireplace in every room, and the ceiling beams. Okay, maybe just the whole place!

France trip

In June we went to visit my sister and her family in their new house in the French countryside. I use the term "new" loosely, the house dates back to the 16th century, they even have a fossil in their paving stones! Their village is called Duex-Evailles, is in the Mayenne region and has just a few houses, a tiny school and the church (whose bell starts ringing at seven in the morning). The house sits on about 8 acres of land, some of which is walled off for a back yard that is full of fruit trees including a huge cherry tree, which is where we ate most of our meals. For the most part we stayed around the house as the girls were still in school.

Roadtrip!

We had to go and get Big Blue from the dealership in Hay River (part of the deal we got) but Josh was working when it was delivered, so Monica came with. We got to ride with Buffalo Joe himself in the DC3. We landed just before 6, found the truck in the parking lot, stopped to get some padkos (food for the road) and made it back to Yellowknife sometime after 11 I think.