Day 40

It's over 1500km's from Edmonton to Yellowknife and although I once drove 2200km's in one stint (except a four hour ferry), I was much younger, much more stupid and freely admit that the last 250km's seemed all up hill due to sleep deprecation. Thus I wasn't  too keen on such a long haul in one go again even when sharing the driving. So we split the trip roughly in half and made easy work of it over two days, staying amongst the very friendly folks of Manning, just north of Peace River.

And there's plenty of wild life to view en route too.

Yellowknife's a friendly enough place, basically at the end of a 600km cul-de-sac. Although in winter, the ground freezes over giving a further 2100km's of access for trucks supplying the oil fields and diamond mines and any ferries in the region are replaced with ice bridges.

We had three reasons for adding Yellowknife into the itinerary:

1) It didn't seem right to say we were crossing Canada by just hugging the US/Canadian border - so we added in this stetch north for extra variety and because, well, because we could! (So long as what you wish to do doesn't adversely effect another person, "because you can" is all the justification you'll ever need to do anything.)

The Wildcat Cafe's a bit of a local institution and worth a visit for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

2) The daily temperatures in Yellowknife over last winter were often colder than the North Pole. In fact, in the winter of 2007/2008, Yellowknife had nine days with a high of -40 degrees and they have a record low of -53 degrees Celsius, compared to New Zealand's comparatively balmy -22.

3) And finally, it's a common place for tourists to go to see the Northern Lights.

We discovered when departing Yellowknife that we were a bit ahead of schedule, although quite how we got ahead of something that doesn't actually exist is a mystery in its own right. Anyway, originally we weren't going to two Canadian provinces:

1) Nunavut because it has no roads and "Jaffa" can't fly even with the best of intentions.

2) Yukon, because we thought it a bit out of the way.

And a bit out of the way it is. In fact, it's another 3000km's for us to go from Yellowknife to Vancouver via Whitehorse, Yukon. Why? I've told you why. Because we can, carpe diem my friends. Canada's a fantastic country, I urge you once again to get out and enjoy it.

Since taking the TV down off the lounge wall four years ago to paint, I haven't watched, read or listened to the news. It's probably the primary reason I maintain such a happy disposition. Initially I thought I'd turn into some sort of reclusive current affairs eunuch, but by and large I seem to maintain a functioning grasp of reality. Although reality's the construct of the mind so perhaps I'm not well positioned to comment upon my own grasp. Anyway, as a result of my news reclusivity, I've only recently become aware Elvis is dead. No just kidding. I've just learnt about the scale of the forest fires in British Columbia.

I come from the largest city in New Zealand, Auckland, and it's 665km's by road to our capital, Wellington. So the 100,000 hectares of forest lost to fire in BC this season alone is a staggering figure to me. 100,000 hectares or 200,000 football fields is enough space to make a road from Auckland to Wellington a mile wide.