Thursday, April 25th, 1985 (Day 8)

Touring Grise Fiord


We spent our morning walking around Grise Fiord. It is a beautiful little town of 101 people. We went and visited 2 small igloos that were already built from an Easter igloo building contest.

After lunch (bowl of delicious chile), we went over to the Grise Co-op and bought post cards and souvenirs. I bought a Tuke (hat), a poster, a polar bear patch, and a shirt.

After shopping at the co-op, we boarded 4 sleds being pulled by Ski-Doos and traveled 5 miles across Grise Fiord. It was a fabulous ride. It was extremely bumpy, but I loved it!

When we arrived at our destination, we visited an old Thule house (circle of stones in the ground).

Our drivers then cut some snow and made snow tea. It was delicious. They had Coleman stoves that they melted the snow with. I am not a tea drinker, but this was delicious. They also gave us some home made Eskimo bread called bannock.

It took us 20 minutes to travel 5 miles. That figures us to have been traveling at 15 miles per hour. The stop that we made was extremely pretty. We walked around beautiful pressure ridges. I sure hope my pictures show the colors that I saw. The frozen ice sticking up out of the ground was a beautiful turquoise.

We had a fun ride back to Grise and then walked around town until dinner. Our dinner consisted of pork chops, potatoes, and peas.

I think my body has become "climatized". I go outside without a hat or gloves with my jacket zippered down and the temperature is 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The body is amazing.

I fell in love with the cutest husky puppy dog today. I was changing my film when she came up to me and crawled in my lap. I think I was warm and she wanted to get off the snow. I had Nigel take my camera and take a picture of me. When I got my camera back, I laid down and the puppy nestled her nose against my neck. I tried to take my own picture and I sure hope it turns out. The puppy was adorable.

Nigel and I visited (before dinner) the Grise church. He, of course, was extremely fascinated with it.

I have just come in from outside watching the neatest thing. Two Inuits (Eskimos) just built us a 5-man igloo. It took 1 hour and 15 minutes. They constructed it from 64 blocks of hard snow cut about 9 or 10 inches thick. Each block weighed about 50 or 60 pounds. It was extremely fascinating watching it being built. I took a whole roll of film (roll #11) on how it was constructed. The plan is to sleep out in it tonight. As of now, I plan to remain the whole night. We will know if I made it later in this log.


copyright (c) 1985, 2000 Robert A. Antol

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