A really, really late update

Hello all of you still following us!

Our apologies for the silence. It has been a bit of a crazy month or two here. We moved out of our sublet (which we moved back into a month later - don’t ask!), Vanessa was away for 10 days (Mississauga - Guelph - Shefford - Montreal), and we have been planning, planning, planning! Wedding plans, of course, but also planning the big move to Yellowknife. Yes, we have been living here for 4 months now and you all probably remember our fun road trip up from Guelph in January, but we are now (finally) making it officially a (semi-)permanent(?) move. With a contract extension for Rashaad, we decided to pack everything we own (that has been in storage) into a U-Haul and drive it up to Yellowknife. Another road trip! Albeit the same road trip but this time in a large, loud, and uncomfortable truck (but in the spring!)…

We flew down to Toronto at the end of May, packed everything up and headed back out on the road. It was another crazy adventure for us (more on that in another post coming soon), but we are excited to finally have Yellowknife feel like home with all of our belongings here.

But back before all of this hectic-ness started, we had more visitors! Vanessa’s parents came to visit for a week at the beginning of April. They flew DIRECT from Ottawa to Yellowknife, thanks to Air North – A great option to come visit us, folks (especially when there is a seat sale). You’ll be in Yellowknife in only 4 hours! They were very impressed with the airline and service.

This week was a little less planned than the one with our previous visitors, but we still managed to get a lot in!

The first order of business was to drive out onto the frozen lake to see the ice castle remnants (it was now closed) before it got torn down and eventually fell into the lake. They arrived just a week too late to see the inside of the castle and also missed out on the Long John Jamboree (see our

). Stuff was still setup but the sculptures had been knocked over. Boo!

We also did the usual visitor’s centre, museum, etc. They visited Pilot’s Monument, Just Furs, and Weaver & Devore, as well as all of the art galleries. They also did the sandblasting workshop at Oldtown Glassworks and made some glasses (one of which broke on their journey home…). Oh, and a romp around Tin Can Hill!

We went for a drive out on the Ingraham Trail one day and found an old abandoned mine…

Another day, we met up with Rashaad and Gustavo on their lunch break and headed over to the Buffalo Airways Hangar at the Yellowknife Airport for a free tour. My dad, being a big fan of “Ice Pilots NWT”, was very excited! The tour was a lot of fun. We got to see a lot of their different planes (the CL-215 waterbombers were Vanessa’s favourite) and go inside the cockpit of a DC-3.

After their first few nights in town with very little aurora, they were beginning to get worried they wouldn’t see any nice ones. Then, mid-week, they got an active, bright 2-hour show (and early!). The aurora were also great the following night. Lots of photos got taken…

The day before they departed, we went dogsledding! This was Vanessa’s first time (as you may recall she had to work when Rashaad took his family). It was a warm day (5 degrees) and it didn’t seem like ideal dogsledding weather, but it actually made it enjoyable. The dogs were hilarious and strong. It was a serene, relaxing day to be out on the lake with the dogs pulling you along.

That was it! Their week-long journey to the territory was over! It was great having them up and having them experience the North with snow on the ground (but warmer temperatures). They are anxious to come back in the summer months and in the dead heart of winter (Vanessa’s dad wants to experience -50!). R+V’s B&B awaits our next round of visitors (back-to-back) starting this weekend! We are excited. We finally have all of our own stuff in the condo to enjoy with our guests!