Fred Henne Territorial Park Campground

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

Friday, August 29, 12:15 pm Mountain Time

Overcast and cold;  temperature, 42F but a stiff wind and lack of sun make it feel colder.

We went into Yellowknife city center this morning, stopped by the Visitor Center to get oriented, then headed downtown.  This is a bustling little city in the middle of a wilderness.  The downtown core is a standard grid pattern with all the affectations of a much larger city--high rise office and apartment buildings, indoor shopping arcades, transit buses, traffic lights, walk/don't walk signs--and we had to circle a block to find a parking place!  We changed some money, took a windshield tour of the "Old" Town (laid out in 1934!), did a little shopping, and returned to the camper for lunch.  This afternoon, we plan to go to the Prince of Wales Heritage Center, a combination art gallery/natural history museum.

We still haven't decided if this was worth the long drive, but now we know what Yellowknife is all about.  The town is built on ancient rock outcroppings on the shore of Great Slave Lake.  Dwarf spruce and birch grow out of cracks in the rock, and already some of the leaves are beginning to turn to their fall colors.  The economy here is, and has always been, based on mining--gold in the beginning, diamonds now.  As a result of this and the harsh weather, the city has a rough and gritty look (the local Ford dealer's lot was full of pickup trucks, but I saw no cars).  There is also a large government presence here as well, everything from the Canadian Coast Guard vessels riding at the lake wharf to the courthouse, Mounties, CBC, and Indian and Northern Affairs.  The downtown streets are clean and clear of litter and the stores looked like any other North American downtown commercial district.  The one or two residential areas we saw had a mixture of a few old log buildings and many more modern homes.  And flowers are planted in beds and pots hang everywhere.

Lunch is over;  time to return to tourist stuff.  I'm using a WiFi at the campground office and I have a very weak signal.  Uploading pictures is just about impossible.  Gotta go.