One thing we wanted to make sure we saw, whilst in Canada were the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights). Before leaving Revelstoke, Frankie spent a long time trying to piece together, reviews, weather reports, and magnetic activity forecasts (I'm even sure she checked all horoscopes) to work out the best place and time to maximise our chances. The answer, Yellowknife, a small town (20,000 population) by European standards but makes up just under 1/2 the population of the Northwest Territories. For context, the Northwest Territories has a land area 5 times the size of the UK.

We landed in a small 120 seat propeller plane, as we landed the the pilot announced the conditions as clear and sunny with highs of minus 20 degrees Celsius. We immediately knew this was going to be one of the coldest places we had been.

We found our accommodation put as many layers as we thought we would need and headed out to explore. We first went to the IceKing festival castle, where once a year a local boat owner, makes a castle out of snow and ice, once the lake freezes so they can have parties and a music festival. For $CA10 each we were able to explore the castle, the tunnels go on the slides and generally get very cold. It was a great experience, even though by the end my legs were numb.

We went for dinner at the local brewery, where the beer was great, but we were confused why we were the only ones too cold to take our coats off, while locals sat in t-shirts. That night, we set the alarm for 23:30 as we were told just before and just after midnight were the best times to see the Northern Lights. We first went out without cameras, as looking out of our window, we were convinced there was cloud and at minus 27, we didn't think we would be out long. Luckily, we forced ourselves to walk up the small "Pilots Lookout" monument, as slightly clear from the streetlights, the view was amazing. It was so good, that we were scared to leave to get the cameras. We waited until our legs went numb, before running back to the room to get the camera and phones. As we had found in the day, timing was critical with the electronics, Frankies phone would last around 30 seconds if fully charged, mine around 5 minutes, but it wasn't full, but the camera was the best, lasting approx 15 minutes. The lights were not as good as before midnight, but still good enough to get an idea from the photo below, taken on Frankies proper camera, with a 30 second exposure time.

After the excitement of the night before and both of us suffering from colds, we had a lazy day, venturing into town and visiting a diamond cutting demonstration then the Museum. The museum was great, but highlighted some of the horrors the indigenous had to bear due to colonisation. We also found that booking anything in Yellowknife, was not as easy as we have become used to in less remote locations, so we resigned our following day to a chilled coffee, walking and recovery day. That night, we had dinner at the Bullocks Bistro, which seemed to specialise in amazing fish and chips, with bread soaked in butter. Must be great for the cold winter (and summer days). There was a waiting list of around 10 groups after we managed to sneak in and get the last 2 seats at the bar, that were not reserved.