I am home in Ontario now. It feels a bit surreal to be home again. Everything feels familiar but new.

I went for over 2 months without seeing nighttime darkness. In the last couple of weeks the sun sky never really got black, but it would seem darker on nights when the clouds were overcast. For an hour or two each night it is actually worthwhile to have streetlights on. I got home after 11:00 pm last night and even though the city lights are bright, I feel a huge difference in how dark the sky is here.

Some of you may be wondering how I know that there are only a couple of hours of darkness each night. What is Mark doing around 2 and 3 am? I think I mentioned in an earlier post (which I only put up today but it is dated earlier) that my sleeping pattern has been shifted later so that I go to sleep late and don’t wake up until noon. I have been trying to shake this pattern but it is hard because a lot of people in Tuk are up late every night. In the last couple of nights in Inuvik I managed to get to bed a bit earlier but I will still have a bit of ‘jetlag’ to get over in the next week.

Now that I have a quick internet connection, I can finally put up some pictures! This is just a teaser of some of my favourite pictures but I have lots to share when I see everyone.

Belinda, Edward and Brianna on a polar bear rug:

A view of Tuk:

A view of Tuk's harbour with muktuk hanging in the foreground:

Muktuk hanging:

Suvaks (eggs from herring and white fish) and an ulu:

Some whitefish hanging to dry:

Kukjuktuk - the place where we were hoping to see caribou while we waited on the beach:
Ibyuk - the big pingo I talked about in my August 11th post:

A view of landscape around Tuk from a plane: