Weather: - 20 and cloudy
Sunrise – Nope!
Sunset – Nope!

Darkness envelopes more and more every day. The small amount of twilight that we have is disappearing astonishingly fast with each passing day. I expect that within a week it will be completely dark all day long.

We are set to move into our house the day after tomorrow. Unfortunately there is no sign of out personal effects. Lorie has been working hard arranging utilities for the new place. All of the companies have demanded deposits on everything, phone, power, etc. It’s a real pain!

We are still exploring on the internet, finding out which companies will ship to Inuvik for free or for nominal fees. Some companies charge enormous fees, while others will ship most products for free. Some discriminating shopping should be able to save us a bundle on shipping charges. There’s not much we need anyway.

Everyone up here seems to have an Aeroplan Visa. They buy everything on the visa and, usually within a few years, they have enough points to fly out for a vacation. Even the renters and utilities will accept payment on the credit card. At the rates they charge up here for rent, it wouldn’t take long to build up enough points for a vacation!

We are growing to understand that there is actually very little use for a vehicle up here – well a car at least. The exception would be so that you can drive down to Whitehorse. There are a lot of older vehicles up here, and they are generally in very good shape. They don’t use salt on the roads, and there’s nowhere to drive, so damage is minimized. The exception is windshields. Most vehicles have broken windshields; causalities of flying gravel on the Dempster. People tend to hand on to vehicles for a very long time in the North. With the limited damage and very limited mileage, a vehicle can last a long time.

That’s it for today. Cheers!