Stewart, Hyder, Smithers

Stewart, B.C., Hyder, AK and Smithers B.C.

August 26 – 30, 2013

Misty windshield and wipers swiping could not hide the beautiful road that lay ahead of us today.  An interesting distraction was observing the MAJOR installation of a big set of power lines along side the Cassiar Highway.  This project must have gone on for over 50 miles; seeing the very tall poles being put up – special poles in some of the areas that a local told us were “avalanche-proof” were fascinating.

Wild life sightings were good: another Mom and 2 little moose, and 2 black bears – 1 along the side of road and 1 darting across the highway. The last few miles of the drive were displaying more glaciers. We saw several “hanging” glaciers that appear to be some how holding on to the sides of the mountains. The most spectacular was the Bear Glacier – she went all the way down to the Bear River – blue, blue, blue. Made the trip without any problems – roads were much better (with the exception of a ½ mile or so bridge reconstruction that shook our fillings loose), the fender continued to hang on and the scenery and wildlife did not disappoint.  Camp for the next 3 nights is in Steward, B.C.  The tour went into Hyder, AK (only 5 miles away) to go bear watching in the evening – a real bust! Stood and looked and looked and for about 2 hours and only saw the poor dead and dying salmon (spawning in the stream) and some very noisy kittywakes (gulls).  The night was capped off by visiting the Sea Alaska Inn where Mike and 2 of our tour mates became “HYDERIZED” – a solemn ceremony where they each chugged a large shot of 150 proof Ever-Clear, followed by beer chasers. If they didn’t keep the shot down, they had to buy the bar a “round”.  Fortunately all were “manly men” and did not embarrass themselves.  Yikes that was strong stuff, the waitress lit the remains in their shot glasses and we watched it flame.

Miles for the day: 182   Total miles for the AK Adventure: 4240.2

Early up, Tuesday morning, we headed back to the bear observation place with 6 of our travel buddies. Whining, we all climbed into 2 cars at 6:30am and headed out to find the “da bears” in the gray drizzly morning. We were rewarded: just a few minutes after arriving - Mera an eleven year old, 500+ pound female grizzly bear came to have some breakfast.  She provided us with about an hour of catching and eating fish, eating berries, splashing in the stream and being active enough to keep us interested. Eventually Mera wondered off for a bit of nap with her full tummy.  Thinking that the show was probably over we started back to the cars, only to hear the ranger say that they had spotted a gray wolf.  Figuring that he wouldn’t hang around, we slowly walked back his way – surprise he was still there and stayed for quite awhile catching fish and also enjoying a good meal.  Two great viewings, we were all so pleased that we had drug ourselves out in the cool misty morning.  Our reward was a good breakfast at a local restaurant.  Back at camp Mike and I mixed up the makings for a “Slap Your Momma Bison Chili”.  There was a chili cook-off in camp. Hope it wasn’t too spicy for folks; most of our tour mates are not from the west coast where we like things a bit hotter.  They all laugh at Mike and his “addiction” to Tabasco Sauce on many things he eats.  We didn’t win, but it was still a good dinner, lots of yummy chili concoctions.

Bear Watching again on Wednesday morning – we were a bit delayed as we spent a few minutes rounding up Percy the rascally West Highland Terrier that made an escape.  No bears or wolves this morning,  guess yesterday was our lucky day. In the afternoon Mike went to see the Salmon Glacier, we were short of cars with high enough clearance to make the road up to it, so I stayed in camp and worked on the blog and visited with some of our tour-mates.

Last day on the road with the Fantasy 48 Day “Heart of Alaska Tour” group. We all got up and going, knowing this was our last day to travel together. Sort of bittersweet, we have had such a great time.  After bumping back through the bridge construction the roads improved dramatically.  The landscape started to look a lot more like the agricultural areas that we have spent so much of our North American Safari traveling through – hay fields, cattle, etc.  Just because things were going too smoothly Mike decided on trying an experiment: how low will the fuel gauge go into empty before it really is EMPTY?  Well we now know the answer – NOT FAR ENOUGH!  Yes we ran out of diesel, fortunately it was on a stretch of road with a small amount of shoulder (much of our tour we have had NO shoulders or very soft ones at best). Sputter, sputter, cough and stall, - just about 3 miles short of our planned fuel stop.  With the assistance of one of our other tours rigs we were able to get the Prius off the dolly and Mike ran into the fuel station and got some diesel.  Also very lucky was that the old rig started back up after only 3-4 attempts; guess that is not always the case.  We got back on the road, and fueled her up - $500.00+ fill!  That was our excitement for the day!  We made Smithers mid-afternoon, just in time to get parked, cleaned up and ready for our Farewell Dinner at a local hotel.  Mike ran into town and got a much-needed haircut.  Gone are the gray curls that I had gotten sort of used to.  It was a good dinner and a nice evening, all of us giving our thanks to the staff and tour mates for a wonderful time.

Miles for the day: 206                                                          Total miles for the AK Adventure: 4446.2

Friday morning we had a continental breakfast and said our last few good byes” to our many new friends; hopefully we will meet up with some of them again down the road.