Stewart, BC/Hyder, AK

August 6, 2009
Bear Glacier, Stewart, BC

Yesterday's travels were mostly uneventful. We continued south on the Cassiar Highway, making our way through some more construction zones. One was so "fresh" with gravel, I think they were using the through traffic (us) to pack it down for them. Slow going!

Once past Dease Lake, about halfway down the Cassiar, the road turned better, with some sections having been rebuilt as late as 2008. We went from slow to smooth, always wondering when it'd turn slow again. The rest of the day was pretty good, though. We caught up with Bob & Marlene at the junction of the road to Stewart/Hyder, made a bad choice for a stopping spot, and had to drive about two miles farther on looking for a place to turn around. Oh, well; it happens.

Once oriented in the right direction, we headed toward Stewart/Hyder but opted to stop at Bear Glacier, about 25 miles out. What a good call! We parked right across a small pond that's partially fed from the glacier. We had a great view and a quiet night. Geri got the best glacier picture of the bunch, posted below.




In the morning, we woke to find a new neighbor had pulled in during the night. A guy driving a SUV towing a cargo trailer had stopped, almost out of gas. Bob let him borrow their car to go to town for fuel; nice guy!

Once we were on the road, we headed into Stewart, BC. It's a small port town (Canada's most northern ice-free harbor) that relies on logging more than anything these days. We saw thousands of logs piled up or floating in the harbor, waiting to be loaded on ships bound for who knows where. We left the coaches parked at the Visitor's Centre, and headed across the border to the funky little town of Hyder, Alaska. It's pretty small and only accessible by road from Stewart. We had the easiest border crossing of the trip - the US doesn't even maintain a checkpoint, so we didn't even have to stop!

Once in Hyder, we were disappointed to find that the road up to Salmon Glacier was under repair and they were only letting two tour busses (actually a school bus) up there a week. We know it was a school bus since we saw it leave town. We knew we weren't going to hang around waiting for the next bus, or for the road to open, so we headed to the Fish Creek Wildlife Viewing Area. This is one of the best places to see bears catching salmon - except we were there at the wrong time of day. We watched the salmon for a while and decided to save Hyder for our next trip.

We collected the coaches, Geri saw a colorful fire hydrant, we took advantage of the free dump/water station in town, and then we headed back to our new favorite spot overlooking Bear Glacier for another restful evening.