After breakfast we spoke to Judi of Arctic Chalet Adventure Tours about whether whether our Tuktoyaktuk trip was possible today. She needed two more people to make the trip feasible and hoped it could take place today. She promised to contact us as soon as possible about our options. In the meantime we got to play with their lovely white huskies!

Soon after we learned that our Tuk trip would take place at 5PM. We headed into Inuvik to take a look but found most of the businesses closed because of the holiday. We will try again tomorrow.

We had a nap because this day would be long and met at the office at 4PM to head to the airport for our flight to Tuk.

The flight followed the Mackenzie River at about 500ft in altitude and soon we were able to see the Arctic ocean and land at Tuktoyaktuk.

We were greeted at the airport by Eileen, our local tour guide, who picked us up in her van, air conditioning running because of the heat wave.

She drove us to her house where he husband showed us various furs and clothing made from them.

Those Polar Bear pants look really warm!

In the meantime Eileen prepared some traditional food for us to sample. Whale, caribou soup, Muskox and smoked white fish. All delicious!

Next she showed us some of the traditional clothing her mother made.

This was followed by a visit to her smokehouse by the beach and here we had the opportunity to go for a swim in the Arctic Ocean!

The water was surprisingly pleasant and we had a lot of fun. One of the other tour members even went skinny dipping! We all got a certificate of achievement.

We toured the rest of the town and learned a lot about the people who live in this community.

Again the subject of the Residential Schools was prominently displayed in the form of a ship that had taken children from this community, including Eileen’s husband.

There is a Distant Early Warning System station here that was built in the 1950s during the Cold War.

It was time to fly back to Inuvik and enter our impressions in our blog.

Note: Map doesn’t show track to Tuktoyaktuk as the van GPS didn’t come with us on our flight.