We lift the Tanzille Campground under, can you guess...rainy skies. It rained continuously to Stewart along the Cassier Highway, all 240 miles. As a result we only stopped for breaks and lunch.
Once we turned off the Cassier Highway and on to the Stewart-Hyder Highway the rain seemed to get worse. The drive down the canyon was pretty and peppered with lots of road side glaciers but the mountain tops were shrouded in heavy clouds.
Liz needed to make some phone calls once we got to Stewart to follow up with the folks that were driving her car. She found out they were still in Stewart and would be for a day or so. Stewart does not allow overnight camping anywhere other than in one of the RV parks. So we decided we may as well stay where Liz’s car driver people were staying and headed over to the Bear River RV park. Liz also had to call Blue Ox to make the final arrangements in getting her tow bar fixed. It turned out the folks that were driving Liz’s car decided they did not want to drive it all the way to Prince George. To make a long story short, there was another couple in the park who volunteered to drive Liz’s car to Smithers, which is a big city on our route. Liz made arrangements to have her tow bar shipped to Smithers at the RV park where the driver will leave Liz’s car. So, hopefully this saga will have a happy ending. I’ll fill you in later. It just goes to show you how nice RVers are and how helpful they are. This whole episode could not have happened in a more remote area. We have had no cell coverage since we left Haines and little internet coverage.
We settled in at the RV park and headed off to Hyder, Alaska the next morning which is only about 3 miles from Stewart, to see the bears at Fish Creek. Fish Creek is famous for its elevated, slatted boardwalk viewing area of the grizzle bears. The bears feed on the salmon swimming to their spawning grounds between late July and Mid-September. When we got there, the place was teeming with photographers all lamenting on the fact that the bears had not been seen for several days. We did see a black bear sow and her cub on the road on the way, but no grizzlies.
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| Elevated walkway/viewing area at Spring Creek |
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| Pool adjacent to the walkway |
We decided to drive the Salmon River self guided auto tour up to the summit to view the Salmon Glacier. Its a bumpy dirt road for about 25 miles, but the vistas were beautiful! The sun decided to poke through a little and it quit raining for a while.
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| Salmon Glacier |
Salmon Glacier is huge. It has two branches and seems to go on forever.
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| Part of the Salmon Glacier |
Liz and Nancy decided they should take me out for dinner for my birthday so we stopped at “The Bus” for dinner. It’s an old school bus that has been converted intso a kitchen where delicious fish dinners and hamburgers are cooked. The cook, Diane is a one lady show. She cook, serves, and also runs the fresh fish market. The food was very good. It takes a while for the food to cook, as Diane only cooks a few orders at a time, but the wait is well worth it. Its kind of a funky place as is the town of Hyder.
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| The Bus |
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| Funky house in Hyder |
Wednesday morning we went out to see the bears again and they still weren’t being sociable so we decided to drive back up the Stewart-Hyder Highway and revisit some of the scenery we missed due to the uncooperative weather in our way into Stewart. There are few pull outs along the road suitable for RVs, so going back in the Jeep made it easy to pull off and take some pictures. The sun poked through a little and we were able to see glaciers and water falls. The roads goes through a big canyon with steep mountains on both sides with numerous waterfalls a glaciers with every turn. Its pretty impressive.
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| Bear Glacier |
Some of the gorgeous scenery along the Stewart-Hyder Highway
This was a really hard picture to take. The sun was in the wrong place. If you look closely, there is a glacier on top with all of the water falls spilling down.
After dinner we went back to Spring Creek to see if the grizzlies were out. There were plenty of salmon going up stream to spawn but no bears to catch them.
Tomorrow we’ll head out and continue down the Cassier and then catch the Yellowhead Highway to Prince Rupert.
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