Tuesday was our last full day with our Fantasy Caravan. There were no specific plans during the day so people used their time to ready their vehicles to continue travel on our own and to visit. We visited Dairy Queen and Costco.
In the evening, Fantasy had arranged a farewell dinner at a local restaurant...
We were rather jammed into the restaurant -- it appeared that they had double booked.
Judi talking with us "over the wall".
Back half of our area
Front half of our area
Prime rib station
We went back to the campground and gathered in the upper meeting room for more snacks and visiting -- and more space!
We've made good friends!
Since none of us had had to use the yellow caution tape that Fantasy gave us to indicate to the tail gunners a problem with our rigs, we decorated our tail gunners' rig with it.
Our last night at a campground provided by Fantasy!
On Sunday, we left Stewart/Hyder heading east and a little south toward Hazelton, British Columbia. We re-traced our route on 37A to return to the Cassiar Highway...
We were hoping that we might see some of the views along this highway in clearer weather than when we drove in on Friday... but no success on that!
Bear River Canyon - as described in The Milepost, "narrow, scenic, steep-walled Bear River Canyon; river rushes alongside road to the south."
We stopped again to see Bear Glacier -- maybe a slightly better view than Friday, and you can see the water running down from the glacier into the river.
Continuing east, the sky is looking a little brighter!
Along the Cassier Highway between Meziadin Junction and Yellowhead Highway, from The Milepost: "Hydro power line crosses and parallels highway. Completed in 1990, this line links Stwart to the BC Hydro power grid. Previously, Stewart's power was generated by diesel fuel." Note that Hyder also gets its power from BC Hydro.
When we got to Yellowhead Highway, there was a Petro Canada station that had good prices where we had planned to stop to get diesel. Unfortunately, a number of our group had the same idea and were there ahead of us, and there was no room for us to get in. We decided to go past and find another place further along... but when we turned in front of the station onto Yellowhead Highway heading east, we saw that there was another fuel island at the Petro-Pass part of the fuel station -- a card-lock station. We pulled in and tried our EFS card, and it worked! I radioed the other folks in our caravan who were waiting to fill up to let them know that if they had an EFS card, they may want to try using the Petro-Pass. One of our fellow travelers came over to fill. The cardlock pump had only one hose, so thankfully we were finished as he came over and he was able to go ahead and start his fueling too.
On Yellowhead Highway -- we're starting to see blue skies, and what a beautiful color of the water (with glacier flour in it).
After passing through South Hazelton and skirting the side of New Hazelton, we crossed a one-lane bridge over Hagwilget Canyon of the Bulkley River to Hazelton (or Old Hazelton). According to The Milepost, this canyon "is one of the most photographed places in Canada. A 1-lane bridge spans the canyon on the road to Hazelton, on e of the highest suspension bridges in Canada (spans 460 feet and is 262 feet above the river)."
After getting checked in to 'KSAN Campground, we walked around, and headed down by the river to see the view.
Later in the evening, we gathered for our *last* travel meeting!
We were updated on our route for Monday and the procedures for the campground. It was obvious after the meeting that folks didn't want to disband the meeting -- many stayed around and chatted for a while before heading back to our rigs.
Saturday was a free day on the schedule with our caravan. It was also the day of the Chili Cookoff -- Carl had decided to make a chili for the cookoff, so we spent part of the day doing that. We considered going back to the wildlife observation area (bear viewing) but, with the rain, decided not to go.
Instead, we observed the "wildlife" in our own rig (Miss Kitty watching a YouTube video for cats).
A video of Miss Kitty watching the video (at the end, she looks at me like, "What? you're taking a video of *me*?!?!?"):
The chili cookoff contestants brought their creations for sampling and then eating... because the campground did not have a large room, and because it was raining, they re-purposed their enclosed RV wash facility into a meeting area for us!
We started with our travel meeting with information about our travel day on Sunday...
... we are all diligently checking our trip logs and writing notes!
Then all who wanted chili tried a sample of each offering and decided which they thought was best. Steve and Lisa won the prize! They promised to share their recipe with all of us once they got strong enough internet to get online (we offered to allow them to use the guest network on our Starlink!).
(a couple of days later they shared -- here it is in case you're interested:
Steve had told us that he leaves *all* the fat in... it didn't look like it was greasy, but it seems that would be a *lot* of fat!
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!
On Friday, we headed out south and then east toward Stewart, British Columbia.
The sign says that the construction project is COMPLETED -- whoo-hoo!!! But... the lines aren't painted on the road yet? And, different topic... that's our tail gunner in front of us - we had left the campground (one of the last to leave), and then stopped for fuel, so our tail gunner got out before us. They stopped at a pull off and let us get in front so they would be there behind us in case we needed assistance.
Cloudy day, but we could see that there were some mountains in the distance. And, now there is one line painted on the road!
Coming up to a lake - still one line.
Another construction project COMPLETED!
Eventually, we got two lines in the middle *and* white lines on the side!
And then quite a while with no white line on our side... but the road was nice a smooth!
You may think it is weird that we are noticing the existence or absence of lines so much -- that's because we've learned to use them to let us know if there is a frost heave coming up -- the lines will suddenly make a funny curve even though the road is not curving, and sometimes the side line has a greater curve than the center line (meaning that the road is probably going to drop more severely on the side of the road than the center).
A little while later, I was driving... we are working on a project to evaluate pullouts along the road for their suitability for RV boondocking (part of the Days End Directory from the Escapees RV Club). I had printed out the directory listings for our route and we were stopping and marking updates for this crowd-sourced tool -- doing our bit as people in the "crowd" to keep the directory in good shape. The directory indicated that there was a pullout at kilometer marker 214, so I pulled off to verify the information in the Days End Directory listing...
When I pulled off, there was a passenger vehicle further down in the pulloff -- and, what I thought might be their dog near the woods out to the side of the vehicle -- I was thinking that it *might* be a fox, so I woke Carl up from his nap (he likes to take a short nap in the afternoon and while I am driving is a good time to do that)...
... he confirmed that it was a fox...
The fox had been standing, but then sat down. It was pretty far away for us to get a picture (using the zoom on our phones makes a rather pixelated image). I didn't want to pull forward fearing that we would make the fox run away and the other folks would lose their view, but they pulled out...
... and I started pulling the rig forward.
Interestingly, the fox didn't run away, but rather turned down the pulloff and trotted toward us...
Here a video of the fox trotting toward us -- please excuse the beeping, I had neglected to turn the turn signal off:
A photo out the side window as he was passing us
We were pleased that doing the crowd-source project (spending a little of our time to help fellow travelers who may be coming after us) gave us the opportunity to see this fellow. We were concerned that he might have been fed by humans as he was relatively unconcerned about us (even in our big rig); he also appears to have a limp as seen in the video.
We turned off Cassiar Highway onto 37A to head east to Stewart. We were getting a bit more rain...
... so we didn't get a clear view of Bear Glacier, but we at least got to see it a little! Maybe we'll get a better picture on our way back on Sunday.
We got settled in to our site at the campground and then headed out to Hyder, Alaska -- more on that in another post!
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