A Cool Canadian Capital City - Iqaluit

I'm very fascinated by remote and 'extreme' locations.  It intrigues me to consider what daily life is like in a place so vastly different than any place I've lived.  I'm from Pennsylvania.  To me, PA is pretty "normal".  There aren't many extremes (no extreme hot or cold, no extreme light or darkness).  It's a pretty reasonable place to live, with four separate seasons and a variety of weather. It's also got a good mix of densely populated areas and sparsely populated areas.  Pretty normal, not too extreme.  So let's talk about a more extreme locale...

Nunavut!
In 1999, Nunavut packed it's bags (not literally) and quit being part of Canada's Northwest Territories to become a territory of its own.  Nunavut spans nearly 1,932,255 sq kilometers of land, and around 20% of its nearly 30,000 people live in its capital, Iqaluit. To put that into perspective, if each member of Nunavut's population had 1sq km of land all to themselves, they'd fit entirely on Prince of Wales Island.  With land left over.  Also, Prince of Wales Island is just slightly smaller than Taiwan, and Taiwan is home to over 2.6 million people.  Hmm. 

Here's a map of Prince of Wales Island, so you can compare it to the rest of Nunavut.

View Nunavut and Prince of Wales Island in a larger map

So if everyone in Nunavut went to a party on Prince of Wales Island and ended up wanting to stay there (nevermind that it's uninhabited), Nunavut would still have more land than ALASKA available for the polar bears and muskoxen and birds and other cool stuff.  Just THINK about that!

Anyway, I think the population density alone is a huge factor for life being vastly different up there.  You know, that and snow.  And polar bears.  And muskoxen. 

MUSKOXEN!?!

Did you know they're related to sheep?  Baaaaa.

Speaking of Nunavut's cool critters... Their license plates rock!  They kept the same license plates when they separated from the Northwest Territories.  Which means that their license plates are shaped like POLAR BEARS!!  Here is a way cool sample, courtesy of Wikipedia and Flickr:

Roar!

Ok, enough about Nunavut.  It's time for Iqaluit! 

Iqaluit!

Iqaluit is Nunavut's capital city, and it is home to somewhere around 6,000 people.  Your college may have had more people than that.  Mine didn't.

While English and French are the official languages in Iqaluit (and Canada in general), about half of the population in Iqaluit predominantly speaks a non-official language, such as Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut, which are among the Inuit languages.  According to the wiki article, Iqaluit means "place of many fish" in Inukitut.  Here is a stop sign in Iqaluit!

Don't you wish your alphabet was that cool?

The 4-way stop diagram rules too!

Iqaluit was also featured in a White Stripes video!

Let's Visit!

Now that you know some of the reasons I'm fascinated by Iqaluit and its bright yellow airport, let's visit!  You can fly there from Montreal and Ottawa!  The Nunavut Tourism website has lots of suggestions on awesome things to do there.  For example, we can go on a number of Arctic Odysseys!


Stats & Data from Statistics Canada.  :)

Fruita, CO Has Caught My Eye!

After a recent trip to Denver, I spent some time reading about types of municipalities in Colorado, during which I came across a home rule municipality in western Colorado named Fruita. 

Located near the CO/UT border, Fruita is about 20 minutes outside of Grand Junction.  For a fairly small municipality, it seems like a place with a lot of character!  First things first, there is a museum called Dinosaur Journey. While I think I'd be hardpressed to find a dinosaur museum that didn't interest me, this one offers a variety of DINO DIGS! Anyone want to dig up some dinosaur bones with me?!

Aside from dinosaurs, Fruita is also known as a hotbed for technical mountain bike trails. If you are a fairly hardcore mountain biker, you may want to check out Back Country Biker for some potential vacation ideas. :)  Mountain Bike Fruita has more information on specific trails and their difficulty.

One of the things I found most interesting about Fruita is their GIS website. It's pretty fantastic! They've got a variety of maps available from parks to zoning to utilities. So... check it out!

Oh yeah, and they have an annual festival dedicated to Mike the Headless Chicken. I kid you not.

In closing, here's a song about being a paleontologist. :)

Mashed Potatoes!

Now, everyone knows potatoes are pretty awesome. In high school a friend and I even had something we referred to as the Potato Product of the Day! Mashed potatoes are pretty cool and all, but when you add in Paul McCartney everything gets even better. This is pretty entertaining. And educational*. Educational potatoes. Who knew?!




*unless you already knew how to make mashed potatoes.