Polar Bears: Travel Day...

Interesting first day. The flight from Edmonton to Winnipeg was fine. The luggage arrived, all was good. I saw a photographer standing over by the check in area with what seemed like camera equipment coming out of every orfice. Oldest trick in the book. Weigh yourself down with camera gear in every pocket imaginable (Richard was wearing a photo vest with pockets all over). Then when they weigh your bags you remain under weight. As soon as they weigh your bags, you put all the equipment back in the bags again and load the plane. For some reason it doesn't register that perhaps the photographer is wearing 20 pounds in camera equipment. They only look at his bag on the scale. Anyway, we go to register and we of course each have a few bags, so they ask us "which bag would you like to go to Churchill? Which one is necessary?" I don't know about you, but I always go on photography excursions with unnecessary equipment. We are stunned and both reply "All of them." To which they explain that we can only choose one bag and the rest will get sent to us in a day or two. Miss two days of photography in the mean time??Yeah, that doesn't work so well for us, so after a lengthy discussion, we figure out that we can call a cab and go over to the cargo hanger and have it sent up as cargo. That works. Glad we thought of it.

Okay, so we get to Churchill and eventually so does our gear. We pick up my parka and get a bite to eat. Low and behold there is a bone in my hamburger. Go figure. A bone?! Oh well, it was good and now it was free. I was hungry. I didn't care. It kind of makes me wonder what kind of "burger" I just ate though.

The train to Chesnae is broken down, so we pile in the van and off we go. Two hours later, the van breaks down. The transmission is leaking, so we wait for reinforcements to come and pick us up. Finally at 11:30p.m. we arrive at the Lodge. Long day, but we are looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully we will see bears. Sounds like it has been hit and miss this year with the bears. Some good sightings, a few really good sightings and lots of sitting on dens waiting for them to come out. Sometimes a whole day of waiting on a den empty handed. Oh well, win a few, lose a few. Hopefully tomorrow is the day for us. We'll see. I'll blog about it tomorrow night when we get in.