Alaska - Day Thirty: 7229.6 miles to Hyder, AK

The further south we got, the better and more beautiful the road seemed. In fact, it seemed hard to believe it was the same road we had taken before...

The mountains were gorgeous, temps were in the 70s, the towns seemed bigger...

A mama bear wandered across the road with her babies...

As soon as they got to the other side she hurried them up a tree.

The Stewart-Hyder Road is nicknamed the Glacier Highway and rightfully so. There are glaciers everywhere...

But first you have climb Windy Hill. And they weren't kidding. The wind was CRAZY!

The biggest glacier is Bear Glacier...

Stewart, BC is the first town on the road. It was named after its first postmaster, Robert Stewart...

The colorful grocery store on the left of the picture was a great place to rest and use the internet before driving into Hyder.

There is no US Customs office going into Hyder. Until 9/11 it was the only open border between the US and Canada. Originally it was called Portland, after Portland Canal that it sits on. But the US Postal Authority told them they would have to change it because there were already too many cities named Portland. Rich silver mines, and some gold, dominated the economy there for many years.

Now the main attractions are "the bus" (the best fish & chips made by one woman in her bus by her house for about 18 years now)...

Salmon Glacier (the road out there was a narrow, winding, gravel road with drop-offs straight down to the glacier)...

And bear watching at Fish Creek... (we put off our trip here until we were on our way home to wait for the salmon run)

Before going to Salmon Glacier, we stopped but it was too early for bears and all we saw were spawning salmon (it was amazing to watch those big fish struggle against the current to lay their eggs) and photographers holding their prime spot...

But you could see that there had been bears there before...

The crowd had grown considerably when we got back, but still no bears. The ranger said the bear activity varied every year. One year, there was only one. The first year they built the viewing platform, a pack of wolves hung out at the creek with the bears all summer long. He said that in over 40 years he'd never seen wolves before or since. This year three young males were eating their fill at the all-you-can-eat salmon buffet.

In the meantime it was fun to watch a pair of beavers busily building their dam, only to have it torn down by the rangers to let the salmon come up to spawn. But it didn't seem to discourage them at all...

Now I know how we got the saying, "busy as a beaver"...

After waiting for quite a while, our first bear made an appearance...

Rather than following the crowd, I stayed right where I was and he walked right through the creek to right below where I was standing and made a few swipes in the water but accomplished little more than to scare off all the fish... :)

Then he wandered back into the brush, only to come back a few minutes later...

This time he had a plan: trap the fish between his paw and the bank. It worked! He immediately took his fish back into the trees to eat in private.

Then we realized we were hungry, too. But we didn't want to miss any more bears. So we went back to the truck and ate a quick snack.

While we were eating a mom and her son that we'd met at "the bus" showed up. We had overheard her telling another couple that they had gone three times to see bears and missed them every single time. I was so sad for them, knowing they had just missed the bears AGAIN... :(

I'm glad we weren't gone too long because a second bear showed up and wandered along the creek...

And they got to see it this time! Hooray!!!

We had so much fun chatting with them and hearing their stories about their trip from Florida and their adventures in Yellowstone that we stood in the parking lot talking long after the viewing platform was closed. Apparently, the road is not public property and some impatient rangers eventually asked us to leave.

So we went back to Camp Run Amuck, had dinner and went to bed...