Good morning

There are only 3 days left until May, and it's snowing in Whitehorse!

And the blackout curtains have become a nightly routine. A girl I work with at the hospital was telling me about a melatonin supplement she has been taking for years now, to allow her to get more than 5 hours of sleep from May to September. Apparently lots of people take it here, and it replaces the natural chemicals that the brain releases when it gets dark to make us feel sleepy. So we have a couple of options... melatonin supplementation, blackout curtains, or enjoy 18 hour days and then drink lots of the locally roasted coffee in the morning :)

Evening hike

Last night we went for a hike along Miles Canyon in the Yukon River. Wow!

Whitehorse walkabout

You know those days when you just leave the house in a comfortable pair of shoes and a few layers of clothes, and enjoy whatever comes your way? We have had a few of those days in Whitehorse, and on this one we took the camera and snapped photos of lots of things that caught our eyes.

We made it back from our Easter weekend in Kluane

Lauren was given a long weekend and I was able to take one without upsetting to many feathers at the farm, so we headed off to Kluane for our first camp out in Yukon.

We left Friday after visiting the local Canadian Tire twice. The first time for fuel, and water. As soon as we got back to the car we emptied our hands and when straight back. We forgot the all-important

Happy Easter and Happy Earth Day

Holidays are wonderful and although we don't get to see the family, we are excited about our prospects for some high adventure. Like Lauren wrote in the last post, we are headed to Kluane National Park this morning. It is only about a 90 minute drive west from Whitehorse, right in the southwest corner of Yukon. Kluane (clue-on-ee) borders other parks in Alaska and British Columbia, so the parkland is HUGE, far too large for just a weekend trip, but if the roads are open we'll get to see some great trails. We're expecting good weather- sunny and ranging from +7 during the day to -7 at night. We are not going to be backcountry camping this time; there are 4 drive-in sites that have plowed road access and a cooking shelter that will make food prep an easy and bear-free experience.

All is well

We just got home from a trip down to Mt Lorne, to take a look at a place for rent. It is as wonderful as a small home in the forest in Yukon sounds, and we will hopefully have a great chat with the landlord tomorrow and convince her that we are ideal tenants. Lauren is trying her hardest to rein in her excitement before there are any concrete arrangements, but it's impossible not to imagine camping outside in the backyard, and filling the three raised beds with vegetables. And putting a dog in the dog pen! And getting a comfy pull-out couch for visitors! And caribou-watching! We'll keep you posted :)

Confirmed beyond any doubt

Yesterday marked our two-week anniversary of living here, and boy, is it ever clear that we came to the right place! We took a trip down to Mt Lorne after work to visit Deb the musher and have a meal together, and left with our hearts bursting with joy from the happiness that comes from being with sled dogs. Her dogs are Alaskans, and the ones we met are the best leaners ever! As in, when you pet and hug one, they lean into you to get even more into the love. At one point, I (Lauren) was at maximum happiness levels and having a good pet with a leaner, and another dog came along and started leaning into the side of the dog I was petting!

Rich in ideas

Hello out there,

Moving to a new place sure has opened up the floodgates of ideas of ways to have fun. Just in the past few days we have decided to:

1) Take up the sport of skijoring (from the Norwegian word meaning 'ski driving'), which involves tying yourself to a few dogs that like to pull, and cross-country skiing behind them. Whitehorse hosts the world's longest skijoring race, 160km

Dogs, books and a walk

Another great day showed up today, and included a visit with a new friend and her sled dogs, books from the library to improve our community gardening skills, a walk through a nice waterfront and downtown, news of some booked plane tickets, a tasty meal and some daydreaming of moving to a hamlet 30 minutes from Whitehorse. We see the sun set behind the mountains beside the town, and it is around 8.45. The days already feel a bit longer than they usually do during a Toronto summer.

An interesting observation:

The longest day we have experienced in Toronto:

Date: Jun 21

Sunrise: 5:36 AM

Sunset: 9:03 PM

Length of day: 15h 26m 44s

What we can look forward to in Whitehorse:

Date: Jun 21

Sunrise:

4:28 AM

Sunset: 11:37 PM

Length of day: 19h 08m 28s

And what we can look forward to with Tricia and Samantha in Dawson:

Date: July 15     Sunrise: 3:03 AM     Sunset: 12:18 PM    Hours of natural illumination: 22.7

And what LK and JP have to look forward to in Inuvik:

Date: Sep 1

Sunrise: 7:19 AM

Sunset: 10:28 PM

Length of day: 15h 09m 09s

Hope you have seen some nice spring flowers lately! Also, thanks Andrea and Rob for the really nice message. We love you Wallises a lot a lot.
Lauren :)

Local life

Hello all,

This Sunday afternoon is a mostly sunny one in Whitehorse, with a little chill in the air and some on-and-off flurries. We spent the morning at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve and met some of the local mammals. Not many of the human kind, though- we only saw a few others at the Preserve, even though it was such a great day to be outside. No, we spent 4 hours with Elk, Wood Bison, Dall's Sheep, Stone Sheep, Mule Deer, Alaska Yukon Moose (the big kind!), Mountain Goat, Woodland Caribou, Muskox, Canada Lynx, Arctic Fox and Arctic Ground Squirrel.

Hump day, April 7th

The most important thing first: Colin's semi-retirement and Lauren's new job are both headed in the right direction. Colin's spending his late-mornings/afternoons out and about in town and in the forest, and has been preparing delicious meals and generally being an excellent house-husband. Lauren is enjoying her split between seeing inpatients in the morning and outpatients in the afternoon, and has found that physio in Whitehorse and Toronto are not that different. 

Our First Long Weekend in Whitehorse

We arrived in Whitehorse on Wednesday March 30th. Lauren went into work on Thursday (albeit just to say hello and look around a little), and she will start work tomorrow morning. So we saw this as our last long weekend of our month-long vacation. As long weekends are usually celebrated, we made the most of it, and took time to nap and sleep in a little (Colin more then Lauren, but that's okay).

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!!

Much to our surprise, we bought a beautiful Whitehorse log cabin this morning.

There are lots of details to be settled, but the house is ours. It will keep us busy - some 'structural' work as well as a new roof, floor, etc. but when all that is done we can design our own interior and make some finishing touches - but we have the rustic cabin of our dreams!


Anyone want a work-cation in Whitehorse?

:) Colin and Lauren





PS- April Fool's!