It's Not Hidden If There's a Giant Sign Out Front Advertising Its Location

Salutations intrepid readers!  I hope you're all doing well today.  I've been told that Toronto is uncomfortably hot right now, so I'll juxtapose that with my morning which featured flurries.  Not something I'm accustomed to seeing on September 5th.

The snow faded fast, and didn't accumulate, so by the time we were all up and ready to go it was a lovely day.  We kicked the day off with a trip out to Hidden Lake Territorial Park, which was ludicrously easy to find, despite the name.  It's a stunning drive outside of Yellowknife, and well worth the trip even if you aren't particularly interested in the hike... which you should be.  We followed the Cameron Falls trail, a moderately easy 1.3 km trip up to the falls.  I carried Finn in a backpack child carrier which worked really well, and left my hands free for taking photos.

It's a beautiful time of year for a hike up here.

Someone has invested a lot of time and money into making sure this hike is manageable for even novice hikers.

I just like this photo.

Here's what you get for your efforts.  Well worth the hike up to the falls.

The trail takes you above the falls and there's a bridge that crosses the river.

You'll get to see the falls up close, and from both sides.

So yeah, a fantastic hike, and definitely something that should be on your to-do list if you find yourself in Yellowknife.

We had some lunch on the way back and then relaxed in the afternoon.  I was trying to arrange a boat tour of Great Slave Lake for tomorrow, but the only tour operator I was able to get a hold of did not accept children under 5 years old, so that one is a no-go.  I'm thinking another hike may be in our future.

We had lunch at The Dancing Moose in Old Town, which was phenomenal!  A strong recommendation for that place if you are looking for a good lunch in Yellowknife.  While we didn't hang around long after lunch, I did take the time to snap a few photos of the buildings close to the restaurant for your perusal.  Not the strangest examples of the local architecture, but hopefully it will give you an idea of what I was talking about yesterday.

Okay, but can we make the building look more like a fortress made of discarded sheet metal?

I actually rather like this one.  Not made of shipping containers, but it seems like they're going for that look.

My only regret is that I couldn't get a better angle for you to see how truly bizarre this structure is.

And finally, this Picasso-esque building, because straight windows are for boring people apparently.  Please note the false roof-line.  The motivation for that is beyond me.

After sunset tonight we made an attempt at some aurora viewing.  We drove out to a parking area off the main highway north of town where there should be good views.  The weather was clear, but unfortunately there wasn't much in the way of aurora activity.  I snapped a few photos with my DSLR, and I'll get them posted once I've had time to go over them thoroughly.  For now here's a shot I snapped out in the field of the back of my camera.

That's after a 20 second exposure, so while it looks like there's some lights to see, they were only barely visible to the naked eye.  We'll just have to hope for better luck when we get to Whitehorse.

The problem with aurora viewing in the early fall is that you really do have to wait until at least 10:00 to start the mission, so now that I'm back it's actually quite late, so I'm going to wrap this up.  I hope you're all doing well and I'll check in again tomorrow.