I woke up this morning feeling elated that I would not have to climb through that tent hole again!! Yay!! Lnight was also the first time I needed to use the bowl I brought to use as a chamber pot, too, so I set that bowl (with a lid on it) carefully out into the vestibule and threw everything else that belonged to me out further. When I climbed out, I went to the bathroom and dumped my chamber pot, then gathered all of my outside layers and toiletries and headed to the dining tent to get ready for the day. Seemed like everybody was up early compared to the rest of the week. Oatmeal was set out for breakfast, but Ken had Elisha toast me a bagel since I don't eat oatmeal. While that was going on, I went back out and shoved everything into my bags and set my bags in the middle of camp for the guides to load onto komatiks for going back. Ken said we had time for a short trip to the floe ice one last time. Lee was staying back with some of the other guides to supervise packing up camp, so our komatik was hooked tandem to another komatik, and Inuit guide, Gary, pulled both of them. It was a pleasant drive to the floe ice, and I had the opportunity to take pix of the other members of the group and guides since I was now in the back of the caravan instead of the front.
We got to the floe edge, and it was relatively clear of ice. It was also relatively clear of wildlife. In the time we were there, we saw one bird. Not one type of bird. One. Bird. He was a black guillemot, and I did get the shot of him taking off. You can see his little, red, webbed feet running on the water.
We got the primary targets for the tour, which were narwhals and polar bears. There were other animals that I didn't get pictures of. The animals I didn't see that others did were: snow goose, northern fulmar, sandhill crane (I heard him, though), and the Lapland longspur. Animals I saw but didn't get pictures of were: common eider duck, long-tailed duck, red phalarope, pomarane jaeger, parasitic jaeger, Iceland gull, and the common raven. There were other possible animals on the species list, but they aren't overly common in the area. The bowhead whale and walrus are more common in other spots. I may consider doing Eagle-Eye's tour to see them (which would use a hotel every night) or I may see about getting those in Alaska.
When we got back to camp, most things had been packed up.
The bathroom was the last thing to go!
We left the kitchen and dining tents for the next group, which will come in a week later.
Crawling over the cooler on our komatik was also painful on my knees, so I was also looking forward to not doing that again. I was expecting the ride back out to be as cold as the ride in, but it really wasn't so bad. Three hours, but we didn't have any huge wind blowing against us making the wind from the drive extra cold. Plus, I had gotten more acclimated to it and knew more of how to dress. We saw a few more seals hanging out and there were more cracks than I remember coming in. I don't remember the gulls hanging out by the cracks coming in, but I didn't really pay that much attention to the gulls coming in. For some reason, I didn't do many pictures on the way home. We did stop at a lovely iceberg about halfway between our camp and Pond Inlet. One of our group used her timer and monopod to take a group shot. The four people on the right as well as the three sitting/kneeling are our local Inuit guides. The man in the blue coat beside them is Ken, our tour leader with Eagle Eye, and the rest is our motley crew of campers!
Another vantage point of the same iceberg. Getting up close to these icebergs to really be able to look at them from various perspectives was an amazing experience all its own. Seeing the impact they have on the floe ice is also highly interesting. These are things you can't get on a cruise, even an expedition cruise.
We finally pulled into Pond Inlet, where Jim from the hotel was waiting to pick us up and take us and our bags to the hotel. I looked back at my pictures, and this hillside was pretty much covered in snow when we left. When we got back, you could see the letters in the hillside. We commented often on the way back about the melt that had occurred on the Eclipse Sound between the time we went to the floe edge and the time we got back, too. I'm glad I went on the earlier of the two offered times, both in June. Our guides and other locals said the ice in the Eclipse Sound is usually fully melted by the end of July, and that it will likely start refreezing in November.
When we got to the hotel, we had hot showers, and Jim assured us that the water heaters could handle all of us, so no concerns about running out. I used the whole hotel-sized bottle of conditioner, and my hair still wanted more. I was clean and warm for the first time in days! When I went to the dining room for dinner, it was hard to recognize a lot of our group! The hotel even offered free use of washers and dryers with free laundry soap. Dinner was lovely. Salad as an appetizer followed by a huge pork chop with a delicious sauce, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. Delicious!
I walked across to the Co-Op Express to get a soda pop, the first one since we left Ottawa, closed the heavy-duty black-out drapes, and then collapsed in bed!
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