Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Stewart BC and Hyder Alaska

August 20th – 22nd 2012

Our campsite in Rainey Creek Municipal Campground,Stewart BC, was a Hobbit Habitat, the absolute best site we had on the whole trip.  It was like parking in a movie set, everything was kind of eerie, there were lagoons on both sides of us, moss covered trees and ferns everywhere, small caves for the hobbits to live in.  It was wonderful sitting outside in the evenings imagining what goes on in the habitat after dark.

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Lucy also liked the place, although she had to stay on her leash she did do some exploring.

The first night were here we headed to Fish Creek Wildlife Viewing Area, located 3 miles north of Hyder.  You can easily observe the bears, grizzly and black bear, fishing in the shallow water for dog and pink salmon.

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Your above the creek on this viewing boardwalk, makes it very nice to watch the bear and not be involved.  The bears just pretty much ignore the humans. 

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This is the first evening of watching the bear a mother and her cub.  They stayed around about 1/2 hour playing and feeding.  Mike and I both took. 

The next morning Mike, Sandy and Steve got up early like really early 6am to go back and watch again.

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Just a single bear showed up for the morning run.  This time of year, late August, the bear eat the head and the skin for the fat.  In the early spring they may eat the whole fish, after hibernating all winter. Check out the claws on the last picture, pretty mean looking. 

We took hundreds of pictures of the bear, but I will only post a few.  Sandy and Steve spent more time watching the bear and I think they took thousands. We feel so lucky that we were able to observe such a sight.  It is truly amazing to watch them up close.

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DSC_0007DSC_0019P9210078P9210098Salom Glacier

 

We had not seen enough glaciers so we took a day trip to Salmon Glacier, the fifth largest in Canada.  Guess what the road was narrow, dirt and ruts and under construction.

 

Road to Salmon GlacierRoad to the Glacier

The road is really much worse then it looks.  We had our truck, I would not recommend using a small car.

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Stewart, British Columbia is 2 miles away by road. The ferry that used to connect Hyder to Ketchikan stopped running in the 1990s, leaving the only public transportation between Hyder and the rest of Alaska is a floatplane that arrives twice a week with U.S. Mail.

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This is pretty much what the town of Hyder consists of.  They do have a couple of gift shops that are open and a small village with a population of about 75. 

Stewart is a little larger with a population about 500. 

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Anyplace that has the best buns in town has to be good. Love the grocery store with the shopping carts on roof, and then the house so many empty rotting homes and business in this part of the country, really everywhere we travel..

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The lawn art. 

 

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