September 2018 – Naïvely Northward

Tulita’s Mysterious Gazebos

Written by: Faye

Tulita now has a nice new walking trail along the cliff overlooking Bear River, complete with two new gazebos. We’re not quite sure why Tulita has new gazebos, or why there are two of them. There was actually some uncertainty for a while about how many gazebos there were – two had been seen from the far shore, but we had only located one of them. It has now been confirmed that there are, in fact, two gazebos. Perhaps Tulita got a grant and instructed people to just keep building gazebos until the money ran out. Who knows.

Surprisingly few people in town seem to know about the gazebos, so right now they’re these mysterious hidden gems. They are large and spacious, with plenty of seating room and some nice vistas.

42848626_1148541615308260_3561710821161566208_n

42825730_699451047095906_6224399504536240128_n

42769045_1932619593491619_9192000668011855872_n — View from Gazebo #1

42727709_2049242271767204_2403038832086745088_n — View from Gazebo #2

I hid another geocache at one of the gazebos (Gazebo Cache).

It looks like next year’s construction project will be a new campground.

Howard’s Pass Access Road

Written by: Faye

I got to check out a new area of the park this fall: the Howard’s Pass Access Road (or HPAR for short). We were supposed to do this trip in August but couldn’t get in on our charter flight due to the weather. So this time, we flew to Fort Simpson and drove all the way around – this is the only part of the Park that is accessible by road.

The drive around was quite scenic, especially after we got off the main road and started heading up the Nahanni Range Road towards Tungsten.

_DSC3695 — Signpost Forest in Watson Lake, Yukon

_DSC3708

_DSC3721

While in the Park, we flew around in a helicopter to a number of remote camera sites while enjoying the fall colours.

_DSC3749

_DSC3751

_DSC3780

_DSC3848

_DSC3861

_DSC3870

We stayed in Tungsten on our last night and caught a charter flight the next morning from the airstrip there. Tungsten is an old mining townsite (mining for tungsten, of course) that was operational from the ’60s to the ’80s, peaking at over 500 residents in 1979. The mine has been closed and reopened several times over the past decades, and is currently run by a skeleton crew of six men. Tungsten has a delightful ghost town feel to it, and is situated in a valley surrounded by gorgeous towering mountains – it’s fantastic.

_DSC3900

_DSC3904

Oh and also there’s a really nice hot spring there.

_DSC3889

We had a lovely flight back to Tulita.

_DSC3921

_DSC3916 — Once again, Grizzly Bear Lake from the air

Mölkky

Written by: Faye

20180920_193333

Mölkky is a Finnish game that’s a bit like bowling or bocce, but with sticks. You throw a stick at some other numbered sticks. If you knock over one stick, you get the number of points written on the stick. If you knock over more than one stick, you get points equivalent to the number of sticks you knocked over. The sticks get stood back up where they fell, so they spread out as the game progresses. First person to exactly 50 points wins, but if you go over 50 points, your score drops back to 25.

It’s quite simple, quite fun, and quite easy to make as a woodworking project.