Yearly Archives: 2011

The Place That Must Not Be Named

Day 8: Fort Simpson, *** to Fort Nelson, BC (496km, 6023km total) First off, can anyone guess what this is? If you guessed aerial view of a river delta, you're WRONG. If you guessed roots of a seaweed, you're also WRONG. This is the back window of our car, after being inundated with a day of mud in the northern land between the Yukon and Nunavut, which by mutual agreement is no longer mentioned, to avoid memories of this and what exists right after it. As far as positives, there were a few bison. Which was far from enough to…

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North of Sixty

Second post in my Canada/Alaska series... for an explanation of how I got here, see below Day 6: Edmonton to High Level, Alberta (799km, 4683km total) This was the moment I was waiting for: turning due north, toward the Arctic and the midnight sun and where the polar bears roam. There would be some time to get there, but even in Edmonton the days were getting much longer, coming back from the bar at 11pm in time to see the setting sun. It wasn't exactly frozen tundra yet, but even just above Edmonton the landscape began to change, as the…

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Mystery Beast, 400 metres!

Things will look a bit different around here for the next few weeks; I'm taking a break from the abandoned buildings to get up close and personal with Northern wildlife, or at least as much as is possible from the windows of my parents' car. Day 1: Rochester, NY to Sault ste. Marie, Ontario (649mi / 1055km) I didn't even take any pictures... all this looked just like places I've been. Day 2: Sault ste. Marie to Thunder Bay, Ontario (706km, 1761km total) Along Lake Superior, things started to get more interesting. While there was no question the substance of…

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Elevator Action

So I managed to get out exploring one more time before summer. Nate thought he could get us into some grain elevators in Buffalo that actually had stairs to the top so I could climb too. I guess he was sort of right; apparently the permission we got was only to walk around the outside, not to go in, so the trip ended early with us getting chased out by the owners. At least it was something... maybe enough to last me until September. I only ever knew of Pinkertons as something from history class, the union busting scabs. I…

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Ghost of the Blues

After a few pretty hopeless busts in a row, and still on edge from the end of the Tamarack, we gave up before dark and started looking for a campsite. Sure enough, right off exit 98 was a little resort we MISSED entirely! Of course we'd give it a chance when it's just sitting here. As is typical in these parts, the front door was wide open, inviting us in. The perfection of this place was astounding. It looked like it could have just closed last week, in places! After seeing a few rooms like these, we decided not to…

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Cold Borscht

I'm near the point where this becomes an addiction. It's finals of my senior year, and the only thing on my mind is getting back to the Catskills. Nate doesn't even want to wait the week (the misery of entrepreneurship and self employment has some silver lining, it seems), but I finally convince him to wait until after my last exam to go back. So we spent the week planning and plotting, and finding every abandoned resort that might be worth a visit. The first one we explored, the Tamarack, has a typical story of intrigue and shady dealings for…

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