Monday, August 16, 2021
Today was a big day. We had booked a 6-hour Tundra Buggy excursion with Frontiers North.
We met at the Fifty Eight North store at 7:45 a.m. and were shuttled about 15-20 minutes out of town, to the Churchill Wildlife Management Area.
We boarded the Tundra Buggy as part of a group of 16 guests. The buggies are designed to hold 40 passengers, and are operating at 75% capacity due to covid. It was nice to be part of a much smaller group that had the flexibility to move around the buggy to different seats depending on what type of viewing was happening. Our driver, Jim, gave us a briefing and then we set out onto the tundra.
The tundra buggies traverse a network of gravel roads that were left behind by the military installations that were active in Churchill after the cold war. We spotted our first bear pretty early on. Jim has eyes like a hawk, because none of us saw the bear until we were much closer to it.
It was headed down to the water and was some distance from us (and heading further away) by the time we got as close as we could to it. Still, there was a lot of excitement and (muted) cheering that we had seen our first bear.
The second bear we saw was closer – further inland, not on the coast – but he was moving pretty quickly through the area and he soon disappeared over some Canadian Shield rocks.
Our third bear sighting was amazing.
It was a young female bear, and we first saw her lumber along the shore where she climbed up onto a boulder and took a snooze.
She was on dry land when we first approached, but the tide was coming in, and soon she was surrounded by water. While she snoozed we ate lunch parked where we were, keeping an eye on her.
Eventually she got up and moved along, and Jim repositioned the buggy in a spot where he anticipated her going. He was bang on in his prediction.
She came right up to the tundra buggy and took a good sniff around the tires as we watched from above on the outdoor viewing platform. Our feet were inches from her nose.
And as the bear wandered away from us, she had a face to face encounter with a caribou, off in the distance. But the bear knew she wouldn’t be able to chase down the caribou, and so the two parted ways without any drama.
We saw a few other types of wildlife on this tour as well, including tundra swans and a bald eagle, and some beautiful tundra landscapes.
When the tour finished, we took a break back at our hotel, and then headed out for a walk around town. We stopped in at some gift shops, went down to the beach, and picked up some takeout from the Seaport Hotel for dinner.
It was a rainy evening so we didn’t wait up at all for the Northern lights – we played a few games, watched a movie, and went to bed.
Cook Family Travels 