back to alaska

Hi again. Back again from guess where?? Alaska. We are once again in Alaska. Hyder, Alaska to be exact. We rolled on down the Cassiar after filling the tank again because there aren’t a lot of places to get gas on the Cassiar. We drove in about 30 miles before finding a gorgeous little lake called Blue Lake. There was a fairly large turnout and we positioned the camper so that the big windows were facing the water. We made drinks and dug out the lawn chairs and sat by the lake. It was in the 70s, sunny and just great. We shared the spot with a big Class A from Illinois and another smaller motor home. Later, a car with a small trailer and a big dog showed up. While we were sitting there, we started looking for a small duck that we had seen when we pulled in. We didn’t find it but we did find the most beautiful Loon. Its colors were so clear and bright, it looked like a computer generated picture. We watched it float around the lake and then it yawned (it looked like a yawn, really) then it stretched each one of its legs separately out of the water behind it, turned its head around backwards and tucked it under its wing and went to sleep. We still watched it but it didn’t do anything else. Later in the evening after it got dark, we heard it call out and get answered by another loon from a pond across the street. This went on several times and the next morning, our loon was gone.

We headed out fairly early in the morning. We drove through the Cassiar mountains and saw a lot of lakes, streams, creeks, rivers and even bigger lakes. There were some huge lakes that went on for miles and miles. You couldn’t see a camp or cabin on any of them. The Cassiar Highway is another true wilderness area; 450 miles long and little else but the occasional gas station, hotel, restaurant and campground combined….with a couple of exceptions. The first of which is a place called Jade City. There are 2 jade stores across from each other on the road. This area of the Cassiar Highway is responsible for 80% of all of the jade in the world. It is mined right there in the Cassiar mountains. Cheryl was wearing a piece that we had picked up in Valdez and they recognized it as one of the pieces they had made right there. Small world! We watched them cut some pieces that they would use to make jewelry. The rough pieces look like any (large) rock. Once you cut and polish them they take on the beautiful green color. We managed to escape without becoming attached to anything we couldn’t live without (Cheryl already had her jade).

We then moved into the space between the Coastal mountain range and the Skeena mountain range. The Skeena range was large and rounded and rocky while the Coastal Range was taller, craggier and glaciated. It was pretty spectacular and we spent a lot of time stariing up. Soon, we passed through those too and hit another lake region. Lots of lakes with no boats or camps on them. It is so strange to see these massive lakes with no manmade things on them. Along the way, we saw a wolf walking down the road. We stopped but he sidestepped into the woods and walked around us and back onto the highway. Later on, we saw a black bear along the road. He checked us out and quickly headed into the woods.

We were pushing to get most of the way through the Cassiar Highway. We wanted to be within reach of the Yellowhead highway which will take us to Jasper, Alberta and the Canadian Rockies National Parks. We ran out of lakes before we got as far as we wanted to go so we eventually pulled into a roadside rest area to spend the night. In that rest area was a billboard advertising Stewart, BC and its neighbor Hyder, Alaska. Hyder, Alaska is about as far south in Alaska as you can go. It is almost at the end of the tail. Until you drive south out of Alaska, you don’t realize how long this tail is. When we first came into Alaska, we were in Skagway. It took us 2 days to drive from there to the main part of Alaska and we were a lot further north than we are now. I digress. The billboard talked about glaciers in Hyder and bear watching. Hmmm, maybe we were a little hasty in discarding Hyder from our itinerary. We looked at each other and decided we could stand a little more bear watching so off we went towards Stewart and Hyder.

The road to Hyder skirts a bunch of mountains and is downhill for miles. As we got closer to Stewart (still on the Canadian side), we kept finding glaciers. We would stop and take some pictures of the glacier and then drive around the corner and find another one bigger and better. Stop, take picture, move around next corner and repeat previous step. This went on and on. We saw antother black bear in the road but he took off. We realized that it was probably the wheel cover with the loose hub that makes us sound like a moving junkpile.

We got into Hyder and found a campground that is run by a husband and wife from Owl’s Head, Maine. We had a nice discussion about Maine. He told us about the bear viewing area up the road. They have a platformed viewing area along this stream. You can see bear there most of the time when the salmon are spawning (which they still are). The bear don’t seem to bother anyone so we will head out early in the AM to see the bear. Then we will head up to the glacier and play there. Their dump station is actually the city dump station in Stewart. Oh, yea and their internet is the internet of SeaAlaska, another campground, hotel and bar. He said you park out in front and log into their wifi. They do things differently up here. Then we will continue on our way to Jasper. We probably won’t get there tomorrow but I think this will be worth the effort. One last day in Alaska.

We did have Pizza for supper. A café down the street has wood fired pizza in the evening. We miss La Festa. That has been our favorite place to eat out so this was fun. It was not as good as La Festa but it was good. Well, the music is playing in the background, I have a Southern Comfort on the rocks and Cheryl is making out another round of postcards since she can postmark another round from Alaska. It is getting late, actually it isn’t since we are back in Alaska, we are on Alaska time so it is really 9:30 although our clock says 10:30 (we didn’t change back to Alaska time) and it is 1:30 at home. I wonder why I am confused. Wait until we hit Alberta and we have to give back another hour.

Antother reflection on this trip. I am amazed at the way people camp alongside the road here. It is great. There are lots of turnouts and during the evening, they fill up with campers. In the morning, everyone hits the road. You have to be pretty much selfcontained but some of the areas have restrooms. Some of the places are beautiful and some are just convenient. In our part of the country, if you try to do this, you will be rousted by the police and told to move on. Of course, this part of the country is much more sparsely populated and there isn’t so much vandalism so it is tolerated. I am not sure I see it working in our part of the country for a variety of reasons but here, it is expected. Cool!!

Morning dawned early (sort of) in Hyder. We had set the alarm clock for 5 as we wanted to get an early start and be out of Dodge by high noon. First we made some toast and headed down the road for the bear viewing platform at Fish Creek. This is one cool facility. It is part of the Tongras National Forest. It is a large catwalk along a creek that is a spawning area for several kinds of salmon. Bears, wolves and eagles come here to feast on salmon (other animals come here too but when you have coastal Grizzlies (dark brown instead of the blond brown of Denali), black bears, wolves and eagles) who cares about the other animals. There is also a family of black bears that are a tan color. All of them. They have determned that they have an abberant gene that causes the color difference. They are not albino as they have normally colored eyes. We saw some pictures of them and were told that they come to the platforms occasionally but we were not lucky enough to see them. That is one of the consequences of only staying there a half day. We hit the platforms.

There were 2 ½ dozen people there from avid photo nnuts to professional photographers. You would think you were at an interview site outside of Congress to see the equipment set up along the deck. There was nothing going on as we arrived. Soon however, a bald eagle flew into the creek and began to feed on the dead salmon. He was a strikingly beautiful bird and we watched for a while as he shredded a couple of salmon finally having his fill and flying away.

As we pulled into the parking lot, we spied what looked like a black bear crossing the road just beyond the parking lot. While we were on the deck, a bear come underneath the bridge into the “arena” and began pawing through the dead salmon along the shallow water. We realized then that the bear was a grizzly and remembered that the coastal grizzlies were smaller than the Denali Grizzlies and were a dark brown. This one was so dark that from a distance he looked black. He did, however have the traditional grizzlie hump on his back. While there was some interest, most of pro row ignored the bear. He (or she) came down the creek munching briefly on the dead salmon and moving on. It was said (but we did not observe this) that the bear was eating only the eyeballs of the dead fish. Soon enough though, he moved into the deeper water and went after a live one. After a brief struggle, he came up with a fresh salmon in his mouth and went into the woods. He seemed to like his privacy when eating a whole salmon. After a couple of these trips to the woods, he jumped one and ate it right in the middle of the stream. Soon he grabbed a salmon and came ashore right underneath us. There were a lot of bushes and berry bushes near us and into these he retreated. We couldn’t see him at all even though we were only about 12 feet away from him. All we could see was the bushes shaking and moving around as he ate the samon. He finished up by coming out into the open and eating some berries before going back into the river. The bear wandered beyond the end of the arena so we left.

Next on the agenda was the Salmon Glacier. The Salmon Glacier was another 14 miles up a steep winding narrow dirt road. The manager of the campground asked us if we were planning on going saying that it was difficult with a motorhome and not recommended. After finding out we had been on the Top of the World Highway, he said we shouldn’t have any problem and some busses did make the trip. Everything they said about this road was true. It was a tough drive and should one change his/her mind, there was no place to turn a motorhome around. We had no trouble and the trip was worth the effort. This is supposed to be the 5th largest glacier in the world. We started in Hyder at almost sea level and drove up 4,000 feet. At the top, you look down on the glacier that sits between the mountain you are on and a couple of others on the other side. It was quite a different view. The clouds of the morning cleared as we climbed and by the time we got to the top, the sun was out. There was a man at the top (lived there by the looks of things. He had tents and firewood and food. He was selling a book and a DVD that apparently he had put together. They were about the glacier and the animals of Alaska. Upon seeing our license plate, he came over and said he was from Fredricton, New Brunswick. We still didn’t buy his book. The more he talked to us, the more he realized we had done most of the things he had in his book. Before long, I noticed that the road continued on. I knew it didn’t come out anywhere so I asked him where it went. He dug out a map and said it continued on to 3 other glaciers and to one of the terminal areas of the Salmon Glacier (it goes down both sides of the mountain). He said the road went on for 7 more miles but none of it was nearly as spectacular as where we were. Since this sidetrip was a lark, we decided to head on back to the road. After all, it was noon.

On our way back into Hyder, we stopped at the bear viewing area but nothing was happening. A flock of seagulls were trying single handed to clean up the carion in the stream but even they were not up to the task. Back on the road again but soon we were stopped by a traffic jam on the little dirt road. There was a bear chasing salmon in the stream and not doing too well at it because unlike the viewing area where the stream is narrow making it easy for the bear, this area was wide and fast flowing giving the fish the advantage. The bear was funny finally giving in to running after the salmon down the stream. Back to the Cassiar.

The Canadian Customs office was cordial and quickly managed with a few basic questions (there is no US border crossing, I guess we don’t care who goes to Hyder. There is nothing to blow up there. The pavement stops at the Stewart border. There are some great things there including access to The Tongas national park which includes the bear platform and a bunch of glaciers. There are some old gold mines, the Wildflour Café with its evening pizza in a wood fired oven and the bus, a place to get sea food cooked to perfection. The sign there says that if you are in a hurry, you came to the wrong place. They catch most of their own fish and the place got crowded right after we got there. During non-tourist season it is another story. Of course, Cheryl made a friend there. I noticed a man wearing a denim shirt with an emblem on it proclaiming “Master Gardner” and Cooperative Extension University of California. Cheryl being a good representative of UNH’s Cooperative Extension service and a proponent of NH’s Master Gardner Program, couldn’t ignore this and off she went to talk about Master Gardners as applied to the State of California. Worse yet, he worked in the program….is it any wonder we didn’t get out of Hyder any too soon. Hyder should be on anyone’s list of places to go. The drive into Stewart is spectacular and Hyder is equal to the task.

The ride out and down the Cassiar is another story. Not too much there…not bad mind you but after Hyder, kind of mundane. We hit the Yellowhead highway, turned east and hunkered down. The mountains kept coming. Snow covered and 7/8 thousand feet tall. Since we had started so late and delayed our departure even more at the bus. We decided that there was no need to push hard so we looked for a Provincial Park. We soon found one but after a couple of tries found that we were too big for it and moved on. Eventually we came to ***** Canyon. This was a narrow place in a fairly large river that went down through this gorge area. People were dipnetting salmon there and selling them for $5 a fish (uncleaned). Pink Salmon were on my list of unfulfilled types of salmon so we stopped and picked one up. Soon after just down the road in Smithers (a place we had heard about on the radio that is fighting Wallmart) we found signs for a municipal campground. It was a really nice place: electricity (only 15 amps but that’s enough to run the lights and the stereo), water and sewer. They also had great piles of “FREE” firewood and firerings and most of all, dry weather and sunshine. We had our first campfire of the trip. We also had darkness that set in about 10. Real darkness, none of this twilight for 3 hours crap…..darkness. The wood was dry and the fire was friendly and warm…..aah, I can go to bed a satisfied man. In fact, we were so taken by the campfire, we never cleaned up after supper so we have that to do this morning. We slept late (9) and are taking our time. We did consider staying here another day but Jasper beckons. We want to get through there and try to settle in somewhere before the labor day weekend throng of campers hits the road. Well, that’s about it. Cheryl is done her shower so as soon as the water heater recovers, I am off and then it is a marathon cleaning effort as it is now 10 and there is only an hour left before checkout and we still have a lot of miles to go to reach Jasper. Probably another night on the road.

Well, we didn’t get a very early start. We slept late and barely made our exit right on the checkout time 11:00 on the dot. We trucked on down the road. Not too much going on today. Not much to see and frankly not nearly as many miles as we had planned on. We set out breakfastless with a mission to find a Tim Horton’s. They, like everything else, are few and far between but we finally managed to find one. The problem was, like every Tim Horton’s we have found, there is no place to park for creatures such as we. They seem to set up on very small pieces of land and cater only to cars. The one we actually got into had a mall nearby and we were able to park there. To alleviate our disappointment, we managed to find our first vegetable stand. We bought some fresh corn, peaches and raspberries. The peaches were the best I have had in a long time. They were ripened on the tree and were juicy and sweet. The rest, I will report on tomorrow. We have been hearing from my mother that the corn at Tuttles is the best ever. We are missing not only the summer at home but the corn season as well. We eat corn at least twice a week from Wally’s first until the frost is on the pumpkin so we actiously await our entry into the corn season.

We finally found a poprivet gut to attempt to repair the wheelcover. Heads turn whenever we drive through a town because of the bang bang clang bang. I am charging my drill up (probably to the detrement of the folks next door) and hope to fix the wheelcover in the am. We will cook the salmon tonight. I filleted it out this morning and did a poor job of it with way too heavy a knife but it will still be good. We just pulled into our campground and set up (5 minutes work, mostly with hydraulics). See ya

C2