driving with mittens and lap blankets

we ended up spending five days in high level. it was wonderful. not exactly my favourite place ever but the people were overwhelmingly hospitable. they gave us a key to the hall so we could use the bathroom and the internet when we needed it. we felt very special. though it almost felt wrong to do our dishes in the kh bathroom. almost.

a brother who is a mechanic from grande prairie diagnosed ava over the phone and put the new distributor points in for us thursday morning. took him all of five minutes. so that afternoon we headed up to yellowknife. we were so unbelievably cold driving. it was rainy and gross. we layered every warm piece of clothing we had. unfortunately for me, that wasn't much. but once we crossed the river on the ferry, it started to warm up. we actually ended up building a fire and having wine and banana boats at our campsite.

the drive from fort providence to yellowknife is very interesting. it's only after the river that the landscape really starts to change. the trees begin to shrink bit by bit until they only come up a few feet. and there is pink granite everywhere. it's still very flat and slightly barren looking but intriguing. i loved that in some parts the road has been paved with local rock and so they are bright pink too. i have pictures and i'll put them up when i get a chance.

we got into yellowknife in the afternoon on friday. the population there is apparently about twenty thousand. they have a walmart but no starbucks. the old part of the town is all built up on a hill on the shore of great slave lake. the town has a lot of character. i enjoyed it much more than i expected to. and the people are fun. i mean, who would move to yellowknife? they have to have an adventurous spirit, if nothing else.

i really enjoyed the assembly. i won't reveal much here because pg has their's next weekend, but i will say that i found it very direct. perhaps that was just the brothers up here. it was great though. there was about 160 there, with three baptized. and on sunday probably half of the people went to a brother and sister's for dinner. very fun. the circuit and district overseer were there with their wives (the attics and the charlands). we also met a brother who very kindly offered to try to get us in to bethel for a night. we'll see how successful he is.

right now we're in hay river. this is our overnight point on our way back south. tomorrow we'll stay in high level again, then somewhere on lesser slave lake, through edmonton and on to prince albert by friday, hopefully. unless we break down again. *eek*