Day 46

We took our time getting ready to meet the day because the weatherman said the rain would clear up and it would be sunny in the afternoon. We came to Stewart/Hyder for two reasons: 1) Fish Creek where the bears come to feed on salmon; 2) Salmon Glacier, the world’s largest glacier accessible by road. These are both located in Hyder (Alaska) on Salmon Glacier Road. We didn’t check out Hyder yesterday but “Mileposts” said they had 3 restaurants, 3 gift shops, and a post office. We decided we would eat lunch at one of the restaurants – HA – one was a bar where you could order a sandwich and the other was a seafood place on a converted bus. He catches them, she cooks them. We didn’t want a seafood meal and didn’t want to eat in a bar so we went on our way. I had some snacks in the truck so we knew we would starve. The city of Hyder consists of a few ramshackle buildings, a campground, post office and it doesn’t have even one paved road. We expected it to be a little more than that.

Our first stop was Fish Creek to view the bears – there weren’t any. Fish Creek is a National Park and is well designed for bear viewing. There’s a boardwalk above the creek and a viewing platform in the area most visited by the bears. Bears and people are separated from each other. The creek is more or less the end of the line for salmon that have come to spawn and we did get to see a few swimming up the creek. We waited for about 45 minutes and then continued on our way.

Salmon Glacier Road is a pot holed, washboard dirt road that is sometimes right on the edge of the mountains with a long drop off. Thank heaven for 4 wheel drive. I’m afraid of heights but views were well worth the pain and suffering. Jan is sensitive to my phobia so he tries to stay away from the edge of the road. We arrived at Salmon Glacier (22 miles) and it was huge and amazing. We spent a lot of time there taking pictures and just standing in awe. The landscape all around was beautiful as well. There was another glacier 6 more miles down the road – smaller but still awesome. I’ve never seen so many glaciers! The mountains were covered with them!

There were remains of old mining operations all along the way. The last mine shut down in 1996 and now the only activity is mining exploration. These towns are pretty depressed and sure could use a new mine. Right now tourism is their biggest industry and there’s none of that going on in the winter.

We stopped at Fish Creek again and waited about an hour and a half but there still weren’t any bears. The ranger told us they found some dead salmon on the banks of the creek but those had been grabbed by wolves. They know that because wolves just eat the heads off the fish and leave the rest; bears eat the stomach and eggs and leave the rest. These dead salmon didn’t have heads. Gross! We did get to see a mink – we had never seen one of those in the wild. Jan took pictures of pictures of bears that were on display so he could show them to Nancy and tell her they were bears we saw at the creek. He wowed Nancy earlier in the trip with an amazing picture of a duck that was really a picture of a picture. He’s a funny guy.

We didn’t starve while we were out – we each had a piece of jerky and a moon pie. Now that’s some healthy eating!