What did we do in our free time? You must remember that the days are very long in summer above the Arctic Circle. Daylight is most of the day. It never really got completely dark. That gave us plenty of time to hike, eat, and then do whatever we felt like doing. Here’s a few photos of us on our free time.

Picking blueberries was one of my favorite things to do and we were completely surrounded by blueberry plants. We would have survived until everything froze just from the blueberries.

Andrew is skipping rocks in the Ambler River in the second photo. We had plenty of flat rocks to choose from.

We really enjoyed our evening campfires in Gates. Yes, it’s evening even though it’s still very light out. We had to have our fires out on the gravel spit so we had to keep our big rubber boots on to cross the creek. But there was plenty of driftwood out there so no shortage of fire wood. We would read, sing, play games, and I even read some Robert Service poems.

Our weather forecast upon arrival was ten straight days of rain. It rained every day but usually some very minimal amount of rain each time. But when it did rain and we were in camp, then we just went inside our camp tent and waited out the rain, like in the fourth photo. The game is Bananagrams.

Vicky is sketching in the last photo. She managed to sketch on multiple occasions this trip.