We were woken up just before 02:00, as the Northern Lights had been spotted.  It was incredibly cold, about as cold as we could ever remember being during our lives (and yes, we’ve been spoiled), and it was even colder and windier up on the observation deck.  It was so windy in fact that we couldn’t take long exposure photos, as the observation deck itself was swaying.  So we went down on the outdoor walkways between the lounge/dining room and the two sets of guest rooms.  

Unlike Seal River, at Nanuk not everything was under the same roof.  Guest rooms 1-4 were under one roof on the west side, the dining room and lounge were under one roof (and were combined in one large room) in the middle, and guest rooms 5-8 (where we were staying) were under a third roof on the east side.  This morning, the raised outdoor patios between the lounge area and each of the guest room areas was much less windy, as the buildings acted as windbreaks.  There was quite a bit of red in the sky, but very little movement in the coloration.  Because of how cold it was, we stayed outside for just a brief time, got what photos we could before our hands froze, and then went back inside and went back to sleep.

We had breakfast with Barb and Gary.  We discussed plane logistics for our respective trips home (they live in Florida), and whether Winnipeg would be like some of the other Canadian airports and have a place to clear US immigration before boarding the plane, such that once we land in Minneapolis, we wouldn’t need to do anything extra.  We’d done this together at the Vancouver airport, Crystal had done this in Montreal, and Justin had done this in Toronto, so we were hopeful Winnipeg would do the same.

On the morning excursion we were on Mike’s rhino, with just us and Amy on that vehicle.  We headed east, and there wasn’t much to see on the way out.  Mike told us that it’s hard to track when there is no mud and no snow, as with either of those there are obvious paw prints.  When everything is just frozen with no precipitation, there are no paw prints.  We did see a bald eagle (we think it might have been our first), and we were more comfortable wearing more layers today.  We were basically wearing everything - underwear, two pairs of long underwear, pants, shirt, fleece, windbreaker (for Justin), and parka.  We were also wearing our balaclavas (Justin was wearing both of his) and our cold weather hats.  For footwear we were wearing liner socks, thick socks, another pair of thick socks (for Justin), and the bama socks.

We got to the end of the road, and from there went on a walk further to the east, to a point where one of the rivers forked.  Along the walk we had the river on one side, and the forest on the other.  At the endpoint, the guides took out more coffee, tea, and cookies, which kind of irked us, as we’d just eaten breakfast and soon we’d be heading right back for lunch.  But whatever irritation we were feeling was dissipated when a moose walked out of the forest maybe 150-200 meters away from us.  It walked slowly towards us for a bit, then across the river.  Eric, who lives in Alaska, commented that although she wasn’t a bull moose, she was about as large and as impressive as you might see for a female moose.  We all watched her slowly and deliberately cross the river, climb/hop onto the opposite riverbank, and then disappear into the forest again.

When we turned back the other direction, we noticed a mom and baby moose much further up the river.  But they were really far away, and they weren’t visible for very long.  Now having finally seen some wildlife, we were all feeling much better.  We walked back to the vehicles, and then went back the direction we came.  Mike was having issues with the engine and transmission, but he and Emri worked it out.  On the ride back we saw blue-faced snow geese on the ground (maybe the same from the day before), and also some Canadian geese flying.

We had lunch with Jason, Mike, Eric, and D-Nice.  We discussed how to best view grizzly bears in Katmai, and other polar exploration stories.  We found out that Jason and Ella (one of the servers in the kitchen) are a couple, and in the process of getting Canadian citizenship.  He’s from Australia and she’s from the UK, and we wondered if the process was easier for getting citizenship in one of the other “Commonwealth” countries.  Someone commented that everyone seems to want a backup plan in case their country goes full-on Handmaid’s Tale like the US.  We had a short break before our afternoon excursion.  

We were leisurely putting on our boots and parkas in the dressing area when we heard on the radio in the hallway “second wolf approaching.”  Crystal yelled to Justin “There’s a wolf right there!  Just outside the window!”  She started running down the hall to alert Eric, D-Nice, Neil, and Denice.  Justin was running around with one boot on, trying to grab his camera and take at least one picture before it ran off.  It was a black wolf, just trotting down the runway outside the window.  About a minute later we saw a tawny wolf doing the same thing.  Justin ran outside, now with two boots, to get some photos of the tawny one.

Everyone quickly then went into the back courtyard and congregated by the south fence, as the wolves had gone inland a bit and were visible through the fence a good distance down a dirt path.  The black one seemed in more of a hurry, and kept waiting for the tawny one, but she wasn’t in much of a hurry herself, just checking out what was new in the area.  Cameras were clicking everywhere, and the whole thing was over in an instant.  But an instant was all we needed; before our excursion had even started, we were all good.

But we went on the excursion nonetheless.  We headed east again, and we ended up being in the front vehicle, with Emri.  Justin was sitting shotgun, Ken and Kathy were behind him, and Glo and Crystal were in the back.  Emri was looking for wolf tracks as we drove down the road, in the hopes of finding one or both of the wolves.  Justin suddenly yelled “Stop!  It’s right there” - the tawny one was in the willows to our right.  It was only about 10-15 meters away, but very camouflaged.  We all stood up to try to get a decent view of it amongst all of the brush.  We were all looking to the right, but then Emri then mentioned that the black one was now down the road, directly in front of us.  

So we briefly turned to our left, only for the tawny one to then emerge from the willows come right up to the vehicle’s right side, adjacent to Glo and Crystal, then right in front, just a meter or two from Justin.  It stared right at us for a couple seconds, then walked about 10 meters away and plopped down to start licking itself.  Emri told us that this one was named Scarlet (or also Scarleg), and was part of the pack that resided in the area around the Lodge.  The black one, which was/is not familiar with the Lodge (or probably even humans), was more wary of us, and stayed further away, waiting for Scarlet to join it.  The guides didn’t know the sex of the black one, and thus weren’t sure exactly what was transpiring with one of the local pack members socializing with an outsider.  If it was a male, maybe they were in the process of starting a new pack.  If it was a female, maybe Scarlet planned to introduce the black one to the pack at some point.  No one really knew.  [After we returned from the trip, we found out the black one is a female.]

After a minute or two, Scarlet got up and trotted down the road, and we urged Emri to let the other vehicles go past us, as we had (slight) guilt about being the front vehicle that got the incredibly close encounter with Scarlet, and we wanted to give the other vehicles a shot at having the next close encounter.  Our guilt was tempered a bit by the fact that we’d actually been the ones to spot Scarlet in the willows, so if not for us we would have driven right by her.  But still.

The wolves weren’t running, but they weren’t walking either; they were trotting at a pretty good speed - Emri estimated at least 10km per hour.  He also told us (or perhaps it was Kathy) that one way to tell a wolf and a dog apart is that while dogs will stop, turn to the side, and meander when walking, wolves almost always make a straight line and take the most direct route going from Point A to Point B.  Relating this to today, the wolves were going much faster than we could (or wanted to) go.  Fortunately they paused for a bit at the riverbank - probably to determine the optimal crossing point - and so we got to see them from fairly close again.  The black one went across first, and then Scarlet about a minute later.  We watched them cross to the opposite bank, head off the east, and we let them go on their way.  It was less than 15 minutes total we spent with the wolves - just six minutes (at the lodge), two minutes (when Scarlet came out of the willows), and five minutes (at the riverbank).  It seemed much longer, and we certainly got our money’s worth.

We turned the vehicles around and backtracked towards the Lodge.  We stopped at one point for Mike to show us some of the wolf tracks in the sand.  Right as we were getting onto the runway, we saw some black bears.  They were both quite rotund, as they were preparing for hibernation.  Emri told us that could start literally any day.  Evidently the last thing black bears do prior to hibernation is to eat a bunch of grass, to “plug” their bowels for their long nap.  And these two - the larger of which we referred to as Jelly Belly - were chowing down on grass like there was no tomorrow.  [We suppose if they start hibernation, there is no tomorrow, to them at least.]

We continued down the road to the west, and saw evidence of a Snowshoe Hare, or should we say the remains of a Snowshoe Hare, as it had been eaten by a raptor.  There were bits of fur all over one of the trees.  At sundowner time - which we agreed to tolerate today since we’d actually seen some stuff - we each got hot chocolate with Baileys.  Shortly after we got back in the rhino we saw another Snowshoe Hare, this time alive and well.  It started to snow a bit on the drive, but very lightly.  Back at the Lodge, Jelly Belly (or maybe it was the other one, who knows) was just south of the fenceline, so we got a couple more photos of him (or maybe her, we don’t know), then headed in.

At Happy Hour, everyone was sharing photos and stories and viewing other people’s photos.  Glo and Justin seemed to have the best ones, since they were in the front vehicle when the wolves were closest.  Amy and Kathy and Ken had great photos of the black one when it first arrived at the Lodge - they were the ones that radioed in that the wolves were right nearby.  We all gave them a hearty thank you.  We had dinner with Kathy, Ken, Lin, and Jason.  We discussed viewing kills in the wild (admittedly not the greatest dinner conversation), use of imperial versus metric units in Canada, and how it's great that after a week together we really have no idea what any of us do/did for a living.  [One thing we took note of is that Amy is an accomplished virologist that helped make a giant breakthrough for dealing with Hepatitis C.]  Crystal suggested we all play two truths and a lie, as that would be fun after being around each other for a week but not really knowing people’s backstories.  Jason lived in Yukon, but apparently that was not remote enough for him and Ella, so they moved here.  He was very excited to spend time around wolves, and very much enjoyed seeing them today.

After dinner, Emri gave us a talk about wolves.  About 95% of the US population is gone, and they’ve been completely eradicated in Mexico, so they’ve pushed really far to the north.  The common thinking was that there are 24 sub-species of wolves, based on size/coloration/etc.  But recently that has been determined to be more or less BS, with only 5 sub-species - Northern, Southern (below/south of the ice sheets), Arctic, Eastern, and Belaye (sp?).  The Japanese wolf is most closely related to domesticated dogs, which might - might - suggest that domestication of dogs started in that part of the world.  A wolf’s average lifespan is only 3.4 years.  Their howls can be heard 7-10 miles away, which is necessary since a pack’s range can be 50-1000 square miles.  They can run at 65km (40 miles) per hour at their top speed.  After the presentation wrapped up, we talked for a bit and shared photos with D-Nice.  Justin went back to the room, but Crystal continued to chat in the lounge until around 22:30.