Thursday, August 5, 2010

Canada on the way home











We're in Smithers, BC right now. On the way here we stopped at a First Nation site and took some pictures of their buildings. We leave for Vanderhoof this morning on our last day of the tour. We should be back in the lower 48 on about five days. I will call you offspring when we get to Seattle.
We were in Stewart for two days so we could go across the border to view the bears in Hyder, AK. There is a stream where the salmon go to spawn, and of course the bears like it there. Well our luck didn't hold to see bears feeding on fish. We went there twice and only saw one bear who was more interested in berries than fish. At least we got pictures of it. One couple saw a Grizzle eating fish there at 7:oo yesterday morning. Dee said it tried to catch a fish and couldn't so she ate one that was laying on the bank. The bear peeled it like a banana before she ate it. I guess the skin is tough. Hyder is a dumpy little town about ready to fall apart in a brisk wind. They have a post office, but the mail only goes out twice a week and isn't delivered to houses. You have to pick it up yourself like the Waltons did on TV. Stewart is just a bit above Hyder. At least it's school is still open for kids to attend.

The road in and out of Stewart is beautiful. We drove by at least eight glaciers in various sizes. We could stop by one, the Bear Glacier, to get pictures. And the waterfalls up there are spectacular. Yosemite doesn't hold a candle to this 25 mile stretch of road. One of the falls had three falls coming down the mountain side-by-side meeting up in a huge fall into the Bear River. We also saw a bear running and I do mean running down the left side of the road. I think a motorcycle scared it and it ran for the bushes to hide. The roadsides are for the most part very dense with brush, so lots of bears could hide and not be seen. This was all while driving, so no pictures. There was no real place to pull over. But at least I have the pictures in my head.
That's about all of the things we've done since last we wrote. See you soon.

1 comment:

Christy said...

Is it hard to believe the tour is over? You've seen some cool things and yes Mendenhall and Juneau were very familiar. We only saw Mendenhall close up on a canoe so the wide shot was fun to see!