wild windy weekend

This past weekend was jam packed full of great adventure and excitement.  I know it is hard to top the seal skinning and you are still loving that but there were some pretty awesome event on the other two days this weekend.

Let us begin with the Craft Fair.  


At the opening ceremonies Thursday evening Amy came across a table full of neon green t-shirts.  As it turns out they still needed volunteers to work at the Craft Fair on Saturday morning.  The Craft Fair is VERY well attended and has people lined up over an hour before it starts - that's outside in negative degree weather mind you.  Amy saw this as the perfect opportunity to not only get in early and get a good look around but also to score some free shirts.  Oh, and to volunteer, which is always good to do.

 It didn't take long to fill the arena.  I'm really loving the grey amauti worn by the lady to the right of center with the baby with the red hat.  Great colors.

 Lily sports her dress-like size small neon green shirt as she volunteers with me.

Since we were in town anyway, after volunteering we swung by the Country Food Market.  There were three white canvas summer tents set up to house the market.  But many of the items never made it into the tents.

 Cute FIBERS alert: I was terribly thrilled to see this awesome pennant sign.

 

 Piles of huge frozen Arctic Char.

 Caribou heads.  These ladies were SUPER excited to get a caribou head and they sold out really fast.

It was quite the sight to see caribou heads being toted around like a handbag and like it was perfectly not unusual.

Then we went home, ate lunch (because I was REALLY hungry) and got ready to go watch kick sled races.

 Amy with Maeve in the amauti and Lily by the hand.

 Here is a kick sled.  They had the adults racing before (I think) we got there.  Up next was the kids turn.

 Marcus snowmobiled down to the bay.

Lily took a turn on the kick sled.

 

Like she was born to sled.

 

Shannon, a friend of Marcus and Amy's, is a for real dog sled racer (because I haven't figured out what they are called yet) and she brought a her little boy Jonah in a stroller that has runners, so he participated in his first race at nine months old.

It was super cold that day.  SUPER COLD.

Maeve and Amy went home for the evening while Lily, Marcus and I headed across the street to see some Bannock cooking, Seal skinning and traditional games.

Elders prepping for the Bannock cooking, but mostly you should be looking at the mom and kid outfitted from head to toe in traditional clothing.  Caribou skins are great.

 

This was basically a giant jump rope competition with seal pelts tied to the middle of the rope.  Some guy got twenty jumps in for the win.

 

There were four seals plopped out on the snow for the seal skinning contest.  They just kind of hung out there while everything else was happening...dead of course.

 

Unfortunately, this was the last photo I got in that day.  My camera gave up and died.  I really wanted to get Lily and her friend Martha's faces in this shot.  This was the first time they ever watched a seal skinning.

Also know that all the animal gets used when they have things like this.  There was a feast following the contest where the seal was served and they also let people take whatever parts they wished after the contest.  Nothing gets wasted.

We called that a day.  I crashed that night...man was I beat.  I checked the temperatures later, it was like negative 12 with a windchill of negative 30.  No wonder I was cold.  Yeesh.

The next day, Sunday, Jonah came over early.  He was spending the day because Shannon was participating in the dog sled race.  This was like a three hour race.  Lily, Marcus, and I bundled up and headed down to the ice on the skidoo to catch some of the teams coming in.

 There are two people on each sled.  When the finish the race one puts those rubber rings on the runners and the other herds the dogs into place.

The teams gathered at the finish line.  They overturn the sleds and out down weights to keep them from running off.

 

I learned something really interesting about the dog team behavior.  Dogs that are related will rest in one pile. You can see that only a few dogs are related in the top photo while the whole team is family in the bottom photo.

Super cute bag sighting!  Love it.

 Here is Shannon and her team coming across the finish line.  Hopefully I will be going dog sledding with her this weekend sometime and will then get to learn all about it.

It was warming up by Sunday afternoon and by today I noticed edges by the beach were started to thaw a little.  Just the edges.  The sun is so intense that things start to melt even though it is still only about five degrees.

Tonight the visitors center had a special film showing of Snow Walker.  It was really cool (and I didn't even realize that Michael Buble was in it) and made really grateful for getting to experience all of this in real life and want to this land in the summertime.  

(Don't worry Mom - you know how much I love corn fields.)