Friday, April 19th, 1985 (Day 2)

After a good night's sleep, I awoke at 7:00 AM and enjoyed an excellent breakfast. We will all be meeting at 9:30 AM in the hotel lobby to begin our day at the Edmonton Planetarium. Today will be spent touring Edmonton.

It turned out the Planetarium was not open for a show in the morning. So instead, we started out our day at the Provincial Museum of Alberta, Canada. After that, we stopped off at the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre but we were still too early to see a show.

We then came back to the hotel for a smoked salmon lunch. After a delicious lunch, we went and visited Al Oeming's Polar Park. It was there that we saw Polar Bears, Camels, Lions, Tigers, Grizzlies, Prairie Dogs, Gorillas, and any other animal you can think of that does not belong in the Arctic. It was most enjoyable.

On the way back, we stopped off at a liquor store to buy 6 bottles of champagne. I bought a bottle of blackberry brandy because I know it's going to be cold.

I must pack before dinner tonight because we are leaving at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning to fly to Resolute Bay. We have been told to pack light - so I must re-arrange my suitcase.

Dinner was very interesting. We all arrived at "The Carvery" at 7:00 PM. This is the restaurant at the Westin Hotel. We all had some before dinner drinks (mine was a Tanqueray Martini straight up, triple olive). I then had a half dozen fresh oysters for an appetizer. For the main course, I had some medium rare bison. It was absolutely delicious. But it also took 3 hours. So our leader, Pat Sutherland, complained. They told us we could have complimentary after dinner drinks. But when they came around to giving us our drinks, there was no mention of it being complimentary. So none of us had anything to drink. Instead, we demanded that we not pay for our before dinner drinks. They finally accepted that and apologized for being slow. In the end, we received 80 dollars worth of free drinks and we left no tip. That'll teach 'em!

We had to cancel the slide show that we were going to see. Pat had arranged for us to see some slides of the high arctic. But since it was 10:00 and we did have to all get up at 4:00 AM the next day, we decided to wait until Saturday night to see the show.