why we work -- journal

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Making progress, have made a first pass and we're down to 700ish. Here are today's favorites.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Oh boy, this is going to take forever! The entire trip is now a blur - did we really see four polar polar frolicking together?

We do have a plan. Tomorrow on our four and a half hour flight to Orange County (geez, it's farther than Churchill!) we're going to hunker down with the laptop and Lightroom.

Hopefully when we deplane we'll have narrowed it to a manageable hundred or so.

And then there's the video...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

We are back from the tundra - well, headed back. We're waylayed in Churchill for the day, but we've found wifi at the Seaport Inn (conveniently located on Kelsey Blvd - aka "the street") so we're able to upload a few pictures.

From the two polar bears that welcomed us as we arrived at the Tundra Buggy Lodge, to the ones that were constantly hanging around the lodge - standing up on their hind legs and peeking in to the windows, to the COUNTLESS bears that we saw each day, the trip far exceeded anything imaginable.

Going to take a while to go through the 3,500+ pictures of polar bears, but here are a few to give you a feel of the past 5 days...

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Greetings from Churchill !

We have arrived in the tundra, and it is definitely living up to its name. DAMN IT IS COLD HERE. After an hour and a half flight from Winnipeg, we deplaned into a full blown blizzard - think February in Chicago.

Our group of 18 boarded a school bus and took a quick tour of the environment before heading to "downtown" Churchill. The tour included the bear jail, where we saw traps but weren't allowed inside, and a few vistas of the Hudson Bay. At one stop, we even spotted two polar bears about 500 yards off the road! So an hour in to the trip and we've already scored!

Our fellow travelers seem to be a great mix of well-traveled photo enthusiasts. We had lunch and now have a few hours to kill in town until we leave for the lodge. Of course we gravitated towards the internet (at the library) after finding filler for our bean bags at the one and only grocery store in town.

Did I mention that it was cold?

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Greetings from Winnipeg !

This is the view from our room at the Four Points Sheraton, conveniently located at the Winnipeg Airport. Winnipeg is apparently the gateway for polar bears tours, and Wednesday is apparently departure day, as everyone we've run into is headed to Churchill. Immigration was quite thorough, which included questioning like this:

Agent: Have you been to Canada before?
A & J: Yes
Agent: When
A & J: (thinking, hmm, when was the last time we were here? OH YEAH it was when that black bear bit the rental car bumper in Waterton Lakes!) 4th of July
Agent: What is your reason for traveling to Winnipeg today
A & J: Vacation (um, that's on the form, to be clear)
Agent: Can you be more specific?
A: We're going to Churchill to see the Polar Bears
Agent: When do you leave for Churchill? How long will you stay there? did you use a travel agent? Are you carrying any firearms?

Look, you caught us, the whole polar bear thing is a front. We're here to buy discount Lipitor :)

Tonight we have a dinner with our tour group, and then tomorrow bright and early we board a charter flight to Churchill. Don't think there's any internet access in the arctic tundra, so the blog will likely be quiet until we're back in Winnipeg on Tuesday. For those who don't know, we're headed to Churchill to spend 5 nights on a Tundra Buggy, a custom built vehicle with huge tires designed to safely crawl across the rugged landscape.

In the mean time, the National Geographic webcam is supposed to be online by the end of this week, or you can head over to Flickr and look at other people's recent pictures from the Tundra Buggies.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Sunrise on Wednesday.