Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART I Dec 1, 2011
Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART II Dec 8, 2011
Long-Haul Travel: A Frequent Flyer’s Survival Guide. PART I Feb 19, 2012
The Road Less Travelled Jan 27, 2012
Is this it? Discovering Yellowstone National Park Oct 8, 2011
I’ve had such an incredible year and now 2012 is approaching so fast it’s making my head spin.
The first half of 2011 was pretty quiet for me on the travel front, but the second half certainly made up for that! I travelled to some of North America’s most spectacular places this year, I redesigned my blog and my readership has increased dramatically over the past six months. So thank you so much to all of you who have made that happen!
There were some very definite highlights from my travels, so these are the places and experiences that had special significance and are the best memories of my adventures in 2011.
It’s been almost exactly ten years since I packed my bags and watched from the plane window as the Vancouver skyline disappeared from sight. After living there for a year it was a teary goodbye as I promised my friends that I would be back – that it wasn’t ‘goodbye’ but that I would ‘see you soon’.
Ten years is a long time. So much can change.
There are no words to describe the feeling you have when your face is only a couple of feet away from a polar bear: so close that you can imagine the heat of their breath.
Of course, if this happened away from the safety of the hulking polar rover, there would be no imagining necessary. These polar bears have been living on a diet of berries for months now. They are carnivores. They are starving. I rest my case.
“When you are driving your bus across the tundra through a snow storm and you can’t see the windscreen wipers…you know it’s going to be an interesting day”
Rhonda: bus driver in Churchill, Manitoba
Things can get pretty wild this far north. And I’m not talking about the nightlife. But for today at least the weather is behaving itself. It’s minus 13 degrees Celsius with wind-chill out on the sub-Arctic tundra near Churchill, Manitoba but the skies are clear and the barely-there dawn light is perfect.
I feel like I have been driving forever.
Since that first nerve-wracking drive through Anchorage over two months ago I have driven nearly 4000 miles (6400 km) through Alaska and the western states of the USA. I was sure I would never get used to that uneasy feeling of driving on the right-hand/wrong side of the road, and yet now I feel as though I could do it in my sleep.
Seeing as I am heading to the USA today to start a 3 month long trip that will involve visiting some of the best national parks in the world, I thought it apt to write about one of the most exciting, picturesque and endurance-testing long distance hikes that this country has to offer… The Pacific Crest Trail.
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Getting ‘off the beaten track’ is getting more and more difficult these days with tour companies providing access to even the most remote areas of the globe. This also means that if you have the dollars, you can pretty much go anywhere you like!
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It’s with good reason that Vancouver is labelled one of the world’s most livable cities. It literally has the best of everything right at your fingertips: Pacific coastline, skiing on Grouse Mountain, hiking in North Vancouver, arts, culture, and Canadians are just so damn nice! It’s very difficult to fault it. Okay, so we all know it rains a lot. A lot. But I love the rain so I stand by my argument.
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Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART I Dec 1, 2011
Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART II Dec 8, 2011
Long-Haul Travel: A Frequent Flyer’s Survival Guide. PART I Feb 19, 2012
The Road Less Travelled Jan 27, 2012
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