Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Day 13 - R&R in an Arctic Cowboy Town

Somehow I don't think it'll be as relaxing (or as warm) as at Erling the Hospitable's ancestral home.




And since it will be raining again tomorrow, and we won't be able to take a photo of the midnight sun, here's one that I baked earlier .... yeah right!!!!



For those of you in the Soouthern Hemisphere,  the equivalent of the Arctic Circle (ie. the Antartic Circle) would like the following ... and would be a little difficult to get to by Lotus Elise ... see the comparisons below ...

The Antarctic Circle:


The Arctic Circle:


Words and phrases that have no meaning in the Lapp language ....


  • Get up in the middle of the night

  • Be home before dark

  • leave at first light

  • be on the road at daybreak

  • the twilight hours

  • Get out of town by sunset

  • Be executed at dawn
.. and, of course, were-wolves are out and about all winter long ...!!!



Today's Activities

As you can guess from the above, today has not been a day of dramatic photographs.   To misquote Chris Smither's wonderful New Orleans song

I got ba-na-na, watermelon, peaches by the pound
Sweet corn, mirleton, mo' better than in town,

I got okra, enough to choke ya,
Beans of every kind,
If hungry is what's eatin' you
I'll sell you peace of mind,
But this ain't what you came to hear me say,
And I hate to disappoint you,
But I got no photos today,
I got no photos today,
I got no photos today,
No photos today

Instead, we had to make do with Mack's Brewery, the Polar Explorer Museum, and the Planetarium ... each very interesting in itself.  Those polar explorers were nuts.  The conditions, the risks, the hardship.   Incroyable.
The Tourist Office says that the rain will stop soon.   But that might be in Polar terms.  Because they also say that Christmas is coming.   And that nightfall is not that far away.   All we know is that Gene Kelly would have loved it here.
One amusing little aside was from our visit to the planetarium.  There was a special show about the sun.   They explained (without the assistance of They Might be Giants) about its influence, its heat, etc.   The amusing part was that the show was an Australian production.   We travelled all the way to the Arctic Circle to watch an Australian documentary narrated by Jack Thompson!!
As a consequence of hearing about the exploits of the sun, we tootled (in our raincoats) back to the hostel humming to the following tune  ...




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