Text 28115, 109 rader
Skriven 2009-08-31 14:10:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: more YK 101
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Someone had set the alarm for 0800. So up I got.

An early trip downtown, where Jim had properties to sell, so he
gave me a map of the city and the admonition to knock myself out.
So I walked around for a while, went to the museum (named after
Prince Chuck, who visited some years ago), changed some USD
(=CAD1.06, a sad thing), and ducked into the KFC, which is said to
be the only one allowed to sell burgers, by personal dispensation
by the Colonel many years ago. It was a pretty ordinary burger,
the meat kind of spongy and meatloaflike, with your bad fast-food
bun (lots of sesame seeds), a splash each of ketchup, mustard,
and mayo, lots of pickles, a slice each of lettuce and tomato;
but the uniqueness of the setting made it worth the $5.55.

The museum was worth an hour, maybe a hair less, as Jim had
predicted. It's geared mostly to a younger audience, I think,
though there are mineralogical and more in-depth historical
exhibits as well.

There were discover-the-animals-of-the-Arctic, discover-the-
housing-of-the-Arctic, and discover-the-legends-of-the-Arctic
(extremely bloodthirsty, these stories) rooms; a cafe (whose
special was curry with rice, $14, your choice of chicken, lamb,
or shrimp, $4 additional); a rather interesting exhibit about
life along the Mackenzie, built around a set of topo maps of
the entire river stretching almost the length of the building;
and a reminiscence of the Mackenzie airmail route, which
started in the 1920s and was quite advanced for its day.

Off to wander the impressively big-cityish-architectured though
quite small government buildings and smell the nostalgia-making
smells of raspberry and wild carrot warmed in the sun around
Frame Lake - it's charming that there's a substantial green
area in the middle of town. In Washington in the 1950s you could
get these smells ... I wonder what this says about global warming,
excuse me, climate change.

Jim finished his business in good time and had time before lunch
to take me on a tour of old town (which was built on the peninsula
east of the current commercial center ("new town")) and the native
village of Ndilo next to it.

Pilots' Memorial, overlooking Jolliffe Island, is the highest
point in the city, probably 50 whole feet of elevation, so we
had to climb it for the view. The topographic makeup of the area
is pleasantly ledgy and rocky but not at all mountainous.

Lunch at Le (The) Wildcat Cafe, which has been taken over by
the famed Pierre, who is building a restaurant and catering
empire. Jim thinks he's spreading himself thin. It was prime
lunch hour, so we got last table in the joint, right by the
slamming door. Service was willing but slow. Food was okay
but grossly overpriced. We decided to split a muskox French dip
($19 for a fairly generous sandwich with a large number of
fried potato wedges). The muskox tasted like slightly strong
buffalo, a little less gamy than real bushmeat, so I wondered
aloud if it were farmed. Inquiry indicates that muskox is not
farmed, and this was the product of the only sanctioned hunt
pretty much anywhere. With this I had a Sleeman's cream ale,
which did a reasonable imitation of the Alexander Something
stuff of last night. This meal took a couple hours plus, owing
to the place being severely understaffed.

We briefly shared our table with a couple of women one of
whom turns out to have been a friend of Roslind's; eventually
a table opened up for them.

At the end, the harried young waiter apologized for the delays.
I heard him apologize to several other parties as well.

I wanted to take a look at the Ingraham Trail, which goes
past the defunct Giant mine (whose toxic waste cleanup is
projected to cost more than its total lifetime revenue) and
out by a chain of lakes and eventually I believe to the
diamond mines. We tootled a ways east, past some fairly
picturesque lakes, and then Jim said, well, the rest is more of
the same, so we opted to return to the comforts of civilization.
I'd forgotten that I wanted to check out a waterfall pretty far
out on the trail, but that's fine.

=

The local Asian market is called Kim's Confectionery, the name
inherited from a previous enterprise. It has a quite sufficient
selection of goods to suit any palate: impressive for the size
of the town and the small Asian population. There's even a small
Halal section, with frozen goat meat and the like. We picked up
some garlic chives and a couple odd Chinese beverages, including
a lychee drink with baby coconut, the label of which was in
Vietnamese, French, Spanish, English, and Greek. I thought it
was from Yeo's, but Yeo's doesn't in my experience have that
particular set of languages (Greek?!).

Then in the interests of fairness we went to look at the other old
mine, but it was fenced off for its own cleanup.

A tour of the local boozerium, where I marveled at how horrid
some of the prices are at the lower end and how competitive
they are at the top end. I'm guessing that the mining company
executives are used to pay a certain price for their Glenlivet
and would not to cede a substantial premium, which if levied
would encourage them instead to tote their supplies on the plane
up from the southland. We picked up a half case of Big Rock
Macnally's Red, a slightly acidy but flavorsome malty brew from
that same Alberta firm that had produced the tasteless Trad Ale.

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