Fantasy Caravan Day 56 part 2 - Hyder, Alaska - Bear viewing!

After we got checked into our campground in Stewart, BC, we drove over to its neighboring community, Hyder, Alaska.

The communities are very tightly tied with each other -- they are all pretty remote from any other communities in their respective countries.

From Wikepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyder,_Alaska):

The population was 48 at the 2020 census, down from 87 in 2010. Hyder is accessible by road only from Stewart, British Columbia. It is popular with motorists wishing to visit Alaska without driving the length of the Alaska Highway. Hyder has no direct access to any Alaskan road. It is the southernmost community in the state that can be reached via car (others can be reached only by boat or plane). Hyder is Alaska's easternmost town.

...There are few local roads, and no roads connect Hyder to any other Alaskan communities, except through Canada. The AMHS ferry that once connected Hyder to Ketchikan stopped running in the 1990s, leaving the Taquan Air floatplane that arrives twice a week with U.S. Mail at Hyder Seaplane Base as the only direct public transportation between Hyder and the rest of Alaska.

...Because of its accessible proximity to Stewart, and its isolation from other communities in Alaska, Hyder has many commonalities with its Canadian neighbor, with both American and Canadian holidays observed, and a shared international Chamber of Commerce. It is the only place in Alaska not to use the 907 area code, instead using British Columbia's 250. Although Hyder is officially in the Alaska Time Zone, residents set their clocks to British Columbia's Pacific Time. Both American and Canadian currency are accepted, except by the U.S. Post Office, which only accepts U.S. dollars.

We had been cautioned to take our passports with us to visit Hyder -- there is no U.S. Border Control presence, but there is a Canadian border control installation, so we needed our U.S. passports to return to our campground in Stewart.

We drove over into Hyder and found "The Bus" -- a lady who sells fish and chips -- used to be from a bus (seen to the left in the picture), now from the small trailer. She is only open noon-5pm, and she is a one-person dynamo! Our wagon masters had told us about her and encouraged us to patronize her business.

Why did we come to Hyder? To see bears!! So from "The Bus", we continued on to Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site...

We had to park in the "overflow" parking area, down the road from the observation site. The sign says "Bears commonly cross road. Use boardwalk. Walking on road is dangerous." I was standing there with the gate open -- wondering if any bears would be trying to sneak in while Carl took pictures!

Note that, although there is no U.S. Border Control, there are U.S. Forest Service personnel here.

They might be hard to see, but those are salmon in Fish Creek.

The next few pictures may be hard to see on the blog page, but I think if you click on them, you will see a larger version.

This gives you perspective of where we are compared to the rest of the state of Alaska, in the far southeastern area.

"Know your bears -- the grizzly"

"Know your bears - the black bear"

"Bear Behavior"

"A Salmon Life-Cycle"

"Fish Creek Chums"

A small lagoon near the boardwalk

Some guidelines on things *not* to do

When we got to the observation boardwalk, there was a bear "barely" in sight -- he had come into the area under the bridge under the road and wandered down the area in the stream right in front of the boardwalk -- right before we arrived! We saw him at a distance as he continued down the stream out of sight, and we saw pictures and videos that our friends had taken before we got there!

We waited around in hopes that another bear may come (Carl tried "radioing" with his phone, "Release the next bear now!" to no avail). It was raining quite steadily, and it was chilly, and while there was a probability that another bear would come, there was no certainty. Another member of our caravan who had visited here in a previous year indicated that they had not seen any bear at the observation area when they came then, but they drove just a short distance away and saw bears... so we decided to try that.

We drove a few miles further down the road -- it turned into a dirt/gravel road, right alongside a glacier-silt laden river...

The mist in the air and fog coming off the water was really beautiful (the picture doesn't quite capture it).

After going a ways, we decided to go back to the wildlife observation site. As we were driving, we decided to see if there were any parking places close to the observation boardwalk, but there were not... we decided that maybe we should just give up for this evening, and started driving back toward Stewart -- but as we did, we looked along the boardwalk to see if people looked excited -- and sure enough, people had their phones and cameras up! We made a U-turn to head back to the overflow parking, but on the way, realized we would probably miss it if we drove the additional distance and then had to walk back. I suggested that Carl stay and take pictures, but he insisted that I do so, so I got out...

... this bear was heading upstream -- toward the entrance to the observation boardwalk... so he was walking toward where I was standing once I got inside the viewing area.

He was browsing on the plants along Fish Creek, not interested in the fish at all as far as I could see.

I took a couple of videos -- I've put them and some other pictures together here, about 1 minute 20 seconds long:

This bear ended up going under the roadway bridge and disappearing from our view. 

Carl arrived just after he left the area -- I felt so badly that he missed seeing the bear, but he was glad I got to see it.

The Forest Service rangers would not let us go back to our cars right after the bear left -- they indicated that the bears often go upstream a little ways and then come back out of the trees into the parking area, so they wanted us to wait until they were pretty sure he had left the immediate area.

So, *I* got to see a bear in the wild -- we had seen the one by the fjord in Haynes, but seeing him in the stream with the salmon was pretty neat!