Auroras and Black Holes

Good morning, my friends. We've used up our time here in Watson Lake, and we'll be moving on this morning. We're hoping to get a spot at a first come, first served campground in Teslin. I'm told by folks who are traveling these same roads that our chances will be good. We're going 170 miles today, so...a good drive...and we should arrive early enough in the day to find a spot.

Yesterday was spent taking care of some "life" things. I washed two loads of clothes, and we picked up a couple of other items at the grocery store. Mike spent some time trying to diagnose the problem with our jack. Through process of elimination, he determined the motor had failed. Between the two of us, we've arranged to have a new one delivered to an RV park in Fairbanks. We'll reach Fairbanks in about 10 days. It's our only reservation between here and there, and so we'll have to stick to our scheduled stops if we are to make it there on the day we have reserved. Happily, there are two non-driving days worked into our itinerary, so we'll have some wiggle room if something happens.

While he was working out the situation with the jack, I spent some time on my slow-stitching. I've finished the second block now. Here's a wrinkly picture for you:

I'm not sure the significance of the pineapple, but I'm not the artist. I just stitch what I'm told to stitch.

Here are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far. Two down...many to go.

When we had the jack delivery all worked out, we headed across the street to the Northern Lights Centre to see the planetarium show. The planetarium and visitor center are housed in the same building.

Some very cheerful and friendly women met us at the door. We said we'd like to see the show, and they handed each of us a $1 discount coupon. We paid the senior rate of $11 with the discount. Cool.

There were a few little things for sale inside. We were most interested in this display about the Sign Post Forest. If you can zoom in enough on the image below to read it, you can see it has a count of the signs posted there. As of 2022, there were 100,000 signs. I don't doubt it one bit. And in three years, I'm sure many more have been posted.

Inside the planetarium, it was theater seating. The seats tipped back to give a comfortable view of the ceiling.

I tried taking some pictures of the show, but most of the pictures were blurry. There were two short viewings. The first was about black holes, and the image below shows us flying into one.

The second show was about the aurora borealis. It was very well done. A photographer set up a specialized camera in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. It was more of a film than a planetarium show, but having it shown in 365 degrees gave the feeling of being there. Below is a terrible picture, but I'm using it to give you some idea what we were seeing.

At the bottom was a grouping of tents. People were there for the night to watch the auroras. And above...of course, that's what they were seeing. There was also the sound of the voices oohing and ahhing over the colors. It was very realistic, and it helped to assuage our disappointment at not being able to see them with our own eyes.

Okay, so that was our day. This morning we'll get buttoned up and head on down the road. We have about five more days before we cross the border into Alaska. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more wildlife along the way.