Sky's are clear and temp is -36°C with a feel like of -45°C.

This morning we fly from Yellowknife to Blachford Lake Lodge.  We originally thought the flight left at 11:00am, but after Krista double checked and called the lodge we found out that the flight was at 10:00am, so we rushed a little in the morning to get to the plane on time.  Good thing Yellowknife is small and it was only a 6 minute drive.

We got to the "terminal" and we were asked to use their gear.  I thought they wanted me to replace my gear with theirs, which to me didn't make any sense and Krista found me a big argumentative, their clothes was no warmer than mine.  What they actually wanted was to add layers rather than replace layers, which I'm good with.  We got dressed for the flight, luggage tagged, and we got loaded on the plane.  

We were on a twin otter, bush plane, with 10 others.  We took off from the frozen Surface of Great Slave Lake.  The flight was not long, about 25 minutes.  Landing was on Blachford lake.  Both lakes frozen over, depth of ice was about 4 feet.

At arrival we were greeted by Martina she took us on a tour of the grounds, showed us where the cabins were, the sauna, and the trail heads.  Then we went to the main lodge, there Carmen explained where we keep our gear, where / when meals are available and showed us to our rooms.  We got the Sunrise  2 room.  We have a 240° view of the lake, it had two double beds and a single.  It's nice being in the lodge, those in cabins have to manage their own heat via wood stoves and have to get dressed for the cold to come to the lodge for food or a shower basically anything at all.  

Once we got a bit settled we went for one of the shorter hikes, we were still a bit tired from being up for the aurora hunt the night before.  There are three trails of varying difficulty we took the easy one that was groomed.  It was quite wide, as it was groomed with a snowmobile, but take one step off the trail and your thigh deep into the snow, this we tested.  The hike took about 40 minutes.

After the hike we headed back to the lodge.  On days where guests arrive they serve lunch at 2:00pm.  There are two groups that come in on Wednesdays and they wait for everyone to arrive before serving lunch.  After we ate we just took it easy, tonight we go hunting Aurora.

Note: Meals are served buffet style, and every meal throughout the visit was excellent. 

We signed up for the hot tub on the first night, we got in the tub at 8:00pm.  The temperature was damn cold, -30°C witha feel like if a lot colder. But we put on our bathing suits, and the smallest robes ever and the Crocs that they provide and out in the we went.  The walk was chilly, but when we got in the tub, oh that was nice.

We got extremely lucky, while in the tub the Aurora started and we have a few pictures of us in the hot tub with the Aurora behind us.  

Getting out of the tub was interesting, the robes were frozen, the Crocs were sticking to the deck.  We ran back to the lodge.