Monday, August 23, 2022 - Before we left this morning, we noticed a large, female moose swimming across Dease Lake; a distance of about a mile. The moose is a fast swimmer and seems to do it effortlessly. I wish I had taken the drone up to get a closer look. We then drove from Dease Lake to Stewart/Hyder via Highway 37, the Cassiar Highway. At the Meziadin Junction (pronounced; Mess-ee-add-in), we continued straight ahead to Stewart/Hyder. There are two RV parks in Stewart so we chose the Rainey Creek RV Park. This park was created by the local Lions club and the given to the city in 1998. The City of Stewart now runs this park. Due to our size, we were given the choice of four spots to park or rig. We chose spot 70 because it is right on Rainey Creek which has salmon swimming upstream to spawn. The sound of the fish moving upstream was really cool.
After setting up the RV, we drove around town (which does not take very long.). Stewart is a pretty small town. We found that there were lots of small businesses that were "boarded up" and no longer open. In fact, there was only one place to go for "sit down" eating after 6:00 pm and that was the local historical hotel. After looking around town, we drove to the town of Hyder which is four miles away. Hyder is an old mining town that is now basically a ghost town. There are only a couple of small businesses open there. To get to Hyder, you have to leave British Columbia and enter Alaska (the United States). Since there is not much to the town and you cannot drive to anyplace else from Hyder (but Stewart), there is no U.S. Customs stop there. There is, however, a Canadian customs check-point when you return. It is kind of weird. Hyder has two activities that make it a great place to visit. just north of town on Fish Creek, there is a well constructed viewing station where you can watch bears catching and eating salmon in the river. The river is full of Chum or "Dog" salmon, so it is easy for the bears to catch the fish. These salmon are called "Dog" salmon because there are so many of them that the dog team "mushers" feed them to their dogs for nourishment. The second activity in Hyder is to continue onto a dirt road for about 16 miles to the viewpoint for the Salmon Glacier. It is listed as the fifth largest glacier in Alaska. From the view point, you look down on the glacier from the mountain across the valley. Pretty impressive.
Our first trip to the bear observation facility was in the evening and it was a getting to be a little darker. There was one grizzly there and it was putting on a performance for the 100 or so people there watching. This grizzly would run up and down the stream scattering the fish and then catch one to check it out. It seemed to be looking for the larger females since the eat the eggs primarily due to their high calorie content. Apparently there is a lot of protein in the eggs and the brain of the fish. They do eat the flesh too. Pretty impressive to watch.
Tuesday, August 24, 2022 - The next morning we returned and found another grizzly dining on the salmon. Again, a great show with better light for taking photos. This gave me a chance to use my new 200-500 mm telephoto zoom lens. Often I was just too close to the bear with this lens even in the 200 mm setting. It was a lot of fun and you could take a million photos, but at some point you have to move on to the next activity which was Salmon Glacier. Be sure to check out the photos and the videos of this activity.
Many people do not go to the Salmon Glacier because of the dirt road. It is about 16 miles long to the top and the first five miles of the road is "maintained." It was pretty decent to drive on. The last eight miles was "un-maintained" road with lots of potholes to avoid. There were also steep drop-offs and no guardrails. My "barometer" on how scary the road is, is Lisa. She was doing fine all the way to the top, so it must have been an "okay" road. The day was perfect. Clear and no wind. The views were outstanding and the glacier is quite impressive. We did see a bear on the climb to the top. It came out of the brush onto the road and then saw us approaching. It then did a "180 degree turn" and went back into the brush. At the top, Lisa and I took quite a few photos and I even did a drone flight. The drone tells me its altitude in reference to the takeoff height. I went out over the glacier and dropped the drone to minus 700 feet from the takeoff point and I was still very high above the glacier. I had to make sure that I would have enough battery for the drone to climb out from that low point. The views made the drive up the hill well worth the effort.
At the Salmon Glacier viewpoint, we met Kamms XXXXX. He was a very nice gentleman who had ridden his motorcycle up to the summit. He is from California and the Santa Cruz area. I set up the "First Person View" goggles so that Kamms could see what the drone was seeing. He thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Kamms offered to "put us up at his house" if we get to the Santa Cruz area. We might just take him up on the in the future.
After we descended the hill back into Hyder, we went to a small "Shack" that was recommended to us for fish and chips. It is truly a shack too. It is about ten feet long and six feet wide. A local lady prepares the halibut fish and chips and sells out nearly every day. Her husband (who likes to fish) catches the halibut every day and she prepares it. It was awesome; more fish then batter and very light tasting halibut. Fresh is the key word here. It is so good when it was swimming in the sound this morning.
Then it was off to our RV, but not before passing through the Canadian Customs point. You are required to go online and fill out a form called "Arrive Can" which designates the port of entry, your Covid situation, and who is coming through. They scan your passports and the Arrive Can data pops up. They usually let you through with with just a few questions. You need a new Arrive Can update for every time you enter Canada, so it is kind of a nuisance when you are going back and forth to the bear observation facility. The customs officials are very nice though and you get to know them after a while.
Wednesday, August 25, 2022 - We had been looking for places to kayak with one of our options to go in the long "canal" which is the saltwater channel that accesses the port of Stewart. We opted to head back along the high way for 50 miles to check out Meziadin Lake. The day was extremely nice with nearly clear skies and some high stratus clouds. We got to the lake and figured out where to launch the kayaks at a small boat launch. The water was "dead calm" and we had another one of those kayaking days that are simply perfect. As we moved away from the camping area along the shore, we noticed that we could see into the water to a depth of about ten feet. We also noticed a lot of fish swimming down there. It is always fun to kayak when you can see the fish in the water. There were lots of fish in the 16-24 inch range; possibly lake salmon. As we moved farther along the shoreline, we noticed fish jumping in the distance in one general area. We made a "beeline" for that location. It turns out that there were large schools of sockeye salmon massing at the entrance to a small stream entering the lake. Sockeye salmon are bright red when they spawn and it was fun to watch these bright red fish jumping out of the water. We also could see them in the water as they swam near the stream channel. Sometimes they would be so close that we thought they might jump into our kayaks. That would be an experience. After watching these sockeyes for a while, we decided to move towards another point of land that we saw off in the distance. When we arrived at that point of land, we noticed that the water was very shallow for some distance out into the lake. You could walk 100 yards into the lake and water would only be waist deep. As we "put ashore" to get out and stretch our legs and backs, we notice a fresh set of grizzly bear tracks right along the beach that were quite large. We decided to "expedite" our stay at this point. We did not have our bear spray and if a bear were to confront us, we would not have enough time to get back out to deep water and safety since the bear could chase us in the shallow water before we could get going. We made a lot of noise and go back out to deep water. We then crossed the lake and began our return down the opposite shore. The views were spectacular and the reflections of the mountains on the water were perfect. Be sure to see the videos of this trip as there are many excellent shots of the scenery. We then returned to our launch point and decided to have a picnic lunch.
As we were eating our lunch, a gentleman walked up to ask it there was a source of fresh drinking water at the camp. We did not know if there was or not. His name is Winston. It seems that he wanted to strike up a conversation and he fairly quickly turned the conversation to politics. Winston is a staunch liberal who hates Trump. The three of us conducted an active debate on politics for the next hour or so. At least, he was willing to give us some time to speak too. I don't think we changed any minds, but we went our separate ways after a good handshake. Quite amazing though. He hates Trump and supports socialism. His main point with Trump was his name-calling, which he could not stand. This conversation was a unique one since most people we meet on the road avoid talking politics if at all possible. That is the best policy to come away as friends in this day and age.
We then drove back to Stewart (an hour drive) to prepare for tomorrow's departure along the same road again.
Wednesday, August 26, 2022 - Depart the Stewart/Hyder area for Prince Rupert island.