Tonight is the longest night of the year and we're in the midst of a month of 24-hour "darkness" up here in the Arctic. Which is a bit misleading, because the darkness isn't complete. For about 4-5 hours in the middle of the day, we get quite a bit of light, as the sun is just below the horizon. Of course, it is dark the rest of the time, but then we get to enjoy the moon and stars in the daytime. :)
So on the shortest day of the year, I took the following pictures around 2 pm. Enjoy!
The sky in the south lit up by the sun just below the horizon.
View of the Igloo Church in the afternoon light.
The inukshuk outside the MacKenzie Hotel, with the Igloo Church in the background.
I've been in Inuvik just over 24 hours and I love it unreservedly. The internet at the hotel wasn't working yesterday, so I couldn't post anything, and the power went out for about an hour last night, but now I'm connected again, and the world is as it should be. Fortunately, a colleague invited me over for dinner with a small group of friends, so I wasn't alone during the blackout. I got to have a dinner by candlelight with some great people, and hear a lot of stories about life in Inuvik. They assure me that power outages are quite rare -- it was just a unique way of welcoming me to my new home!
Back to the beginning of the day... the last thing I did before boarding the plane in Edmonton was to visit Tim Hortons for a coffee -- oh how I will miss you, Timmies... (for the non-Canadians among you, Tim Hortons is a Canadian institution. Kind of like Starbucks, but less pretentious).
Then this is what I saw on the window of the plane while we were stopped in Norman Wells -- cute little snowflakes winking at me. The perfect image to get me excited for the north.
As we got closer to Inuvik, I saw the moon rise - so beautiful and eerie. Photos cannot capture it properly.
On the way into town from the airport (about a 10-minute drive), you see the sign welcoming you to Inuvik -- the end of the Dempster highway. This picture was taken around 1:30 pm. I was surprised there was this much light during the day. It didn't get really dark until after 5 pm.
This is a picture from my hotel room at around 5 pm. The sky has a really neat blue haze when there is light available.
And the evening ended with an unintentional candlelit dinner! Overall, a great first impression.