Pictures from Churchill: Days 1 and 2

Polar bear skin - this was on display at the Churchill airport... the head was about 3X the size of mine.  Pretty intimidating

The first peatland I saw.  The white stuff is lichen top, underneath is live peat moss.  It feels squishy to step on.

Peat up close - the pink plant is a live vascular plant (not part of the peat moss).

Glen, James, and LeeAnn (the director of the center) walking along the peat.  As you can see, the peat here was unusually dry.

All of the trees in the area only have branches on one side.  This was because of the intense wind coming off of the Hudson Bay.  In the winter, this wind blows small ice particles that bounce along the snow and continuously hit the trees, making it difficult for any branches to grow on that side.  The trees have a skirt of branches all along the bottom (seen here).  These branches are protected from the wind during the winter because they are underneath the snow layer.

A rocket left over from when the station here was used for launching rockets to collect atmospheric data back in the 60's.  The shells were everywhere in the surrounding lakes and bogs still!

A good picture of the landscape!  Peat bog in front, then scattered black and white spruce, and the science station in the background.  We were right on the Arctic treeline, which is why the trees are not continuous in the area.

Another landscape picture.  Pretty eh?

The flower in front (only in half-bloom here) is known as fireweed.  It was bright purple and everywhere.

This was my favorite area.  There were these large, flat rocks between the road to town and the bay.  The bay used to reach much further inland than it is now, so all of this used to be under water.

The Hudson Bay

Self explanatory... we did not take one of these out, but in the fall the polar bear tourist season is huge here.  They take these out (they only travel about 2miles an hour) and polar bears jump on them so that tourists can see them close up.

Caribou!

 

Wikipedia aerial view picture of the Prince of Wales Fort.  This fort used to be used in the Hudson Bay Trading Company days as a trading post.  It was also used as a protective fort against the French.

Outside view of the fort and several old cannons

Inside the fort

Looking out onto the bay.  Any polar bears coming in?

Unfortunately this is the best polar bear shot that I got.  My camera does not have very much zoom.  However, there is a small white dot towards the closer part of the rocky island which is a sleeping polar bear,  The other two that I saw here are on the left side of the island.  They were walking around so easy to see with binoculars but not quite in this picture!

The dots on the wall of the fort are lichen.  Lichen can be used as a dating technique to indicate how old the wall is/ when this pat of the fort was built.  It is a radial dating technique which means that you basically measure the radius of the largest lichen here in order to indicate how old it is.

This may be my favorite picture of the trip.  Fireweed, hedysarum, and dandilions with the bay in the background.