Tuesday, August 17, 2021
We had another rainy morning, and thus a slow start to our day. We had a few indoor activities planned to make the most of our time.
First, we headed to the Parks Canada visitors center, which is located inside the Churchill train station. There are several exhibits about the local wildlife, Indigenous way of life, and early days of the Prince of Wales Fort.
We also went to the town complex, which is pretty impressive.
In addition to housing the local hospital, it also contains many of Churchill’s recreational facilities, including a hockey arena, curling rink, swimming pool, library, and indoor playgrounds.
Then we visited the Itsanitaq Museum, which contains a huge collection of Inuit and Indigenous art made from soapstone, whale bone and ivory, and artifacts dating back nearly 4000 years.
We headed back to the Lazy Bear Cafe to try their lunch menu, and enjoyed a leisurely meal there.
In the afternoon, Alex from Discover Churchill came to pick us up for a Town and Area tour.
This was a great way to get out of town to see some of the surrounding landscapes, look for wildlife, and visit many of the Cold War-era military installations that are in the area.
We began by visiting Miss Piggy, the site of a cargo plane crash in the 1970s; all of the crew survived.
While at Miss Piggy, we spotted a bear in the distance. We got in the vehicle to drive over for a bit closer look.
We drove along “Polar Bear Alley”, a coastal lane with some beautiful scenery (even if we didn’t spot any more bears there).
We stopped in at the Golf Balls, as they’re known locally.
This is actually an old radar station that received information from rockets that were launched at a nearby facility.
The rockets were originally intended as defense against the Soviet Union, but when the Cold War thawed, they continued launching research rockets into the upper atmosphere to study the northern lights.
Many of the sites we visited had additional artwork on them from the Seawalls Churchill installation.
We finished the day at the MV Ithaca, a shipwreck dating back to the 1960s (yes, Churchill seems to have a bit of a Bermuda Triangle-type theme going on).
At low tide, the shipwreck is accessible by foot, and is about located about half a kilometer off the coast. We hiked out to check out the ruins, after Alex first scouted the area for bears, of course.
It was dark by the time we got back into town. We had a few groceries in our room before going to bed. Our tour had been in relatively good weather, but it was now raining again; no northern lights again tonight.
Cook Family Travels 