Day 50- Stewart

 Rain, Rain, go away, come again another day.

It had started raining when I went to bed last night and continued through the night.  I have my alarm set for 8:30 and since the rain was coming down pretty good I figured we might as well sleep in.  

I finally got up about 10 and woke the girls.  We left the camper a bit after 11.  We decided to visit the Visitors Center first.  Got a few stickers for the camper.  The rear baggage door is pretty much full.  I will probably want stickers from Jasper, Glacier, Yellowstone and Mt Rushmore.   I wish I would have put them on the larger baggage doors on the side.  Not sure if I explained but I put them on a baggage door because if I ever sell the camper, I can take the door off and replace it with a new one.  Then I can hand the door on the wall or something.

After the visitors center we walked out to the Estuary Boardwalk.   It would probably be really cool if the clouds were not so low and covering up the mountains.  It was still a nice walk and we had a good time though.

After we went back to the camper to have lunch.  We then headed off to Hyder which is in Alaska.  The border is uncontrolled going into Alaska but you have to go through customs coming back.  

Hyder is a town of roughly 100 people.  It's more or less a ghost town.  During the gold rush there was a combined population of roughly 10,000 people between Stewart and Hyder.  

Our first stop was the Fish Creek Observation site.   It is a boardwalk built to safely observe the bears fishing for salmon.  We parked an a park's person rushed over and told us there was a bear putting on a good show catching fish.  Of course when you want kids to hurry they do everything to take as long as possible.   By the time we we got in the bear had wandered off into the bush.  It did come back out several times to the rivers edge but didn't go for anymore fish.  It eventually walked out to the road and crossed over to the other side.  

We decided to leave and continue on.  We wanted to also see Salmon Glacier.   The road was very poor.  It was a dirt road basically on the side of the mountain.  Before to long we had gained enough elevation that we were in the clouds.  It also rained off and on.  The drive was supposed to be roughly 20 miles.   I should have reset the trip meter.  The tourist board had created an auto tour.  You picked up a booklet at the tourist center and there were signs that corresponded to the excerpt's in the booklet.  I did see them at the beginning but I was so busy trying to avoid the pothole's forgot all about them.  

Shortly after we left the observation center we did see a bear just hanging out on the side of the road eating berries.   We stopped for a moment and then just idled up.  It decided to go off into the bush.  A while later Libby saw a Hoary Marmont.  We stopped for some photos.  He was just hanging out on a rock.  He was cautious of us being there but didn't run away.

We continued on until we got to a look out with other people parked at it.  We really didn't see much but the valley was obstructed by clouds.  I figured the glacier viewing was farther up the road as the pictures and distribution made it seem like you would be at the base of the glacier.  We continued on.  At one point we saw a clearing down in a valley of sorts.  There was a single truck parked there and wondered if that was the glacier viewing area but again it looked obstructed and not like the photo's we saw.  After a while and some grumbling from the girls I looked at the map in the booklet.  It seemed like we had gone too far.  We turned around and started back.  The clouds had burned off a bit and we finally started to get some views of the glacier.  We came up to the turn out and decided to go down to where the other truck was.  Once down here we met a couple who had just returned from a hike.  They said that roughly 4 kilometers down was great views of the glacier.  They even said we could drive a ways to shorten that walk.  So off we went.  It was a trail better suited for the jeep but the truck did fine.  I really need to ditch the street tires and get something a little more aggressive.  Not that it's even close to an off-road truck.  It was fun though.  we had to cross two little streams and some loose, rocky trials.  We got to a point I didn't want to risk going any farther and not be able to get out.  We decided to hike from there.  It was all down hill, a bit steep, a lot of loose rock and some spongy wet areas.  

We finally got to a point where the vehicle trail ended.  If we were more experienced, and better equipped hikers we probably could have gone farther.  The views were amazing though.   The Salmon glacier comes down a valley between two mountains and at the bottom it flows to both sides.   We were on the end of the right side if you were looking directly at it.  We hung out for a bit before heading back.  Davan and Libby had no problem heading back up the mountain and beat us back.  Summer and I lagged behind a bit.  I'm not really in the best shape for hiking up the side of a mountain and to be honest, neither is Summer.   It started raining a bit and we got back to the truck just before it started raining relatively hard.  Perfect timing.  

We made the drive back to the Observation area.  Libby and I walked it hoping to see a bear.  No luck.  We didn't hang out long as it was getting late and we were all starving.  

We tried to go tot the Mexican place again.  Everyone looked at the menu online and found something they liked.  Once we got there it was packed and found out that we needed a reservation!  Who would have thought that in Stewart, BC, a town or roughly 100 people you would need a reservation!.  To be honest, it's kind of a tourist town.  There are a lot of hotel and motels and two campgrounds fully booked.  We decided to go back to the camper for dinner.  After we ate I wanted to go back to the observation deck to hopefully see a bear.  

I didn't see anything after dinner.  If I can get up early in the morning I might drive back out there for a last ditch effort.  We will see.

Despite the weather I think we had a really great day.  Our accidental over-driving turned into a great experience I don't think many get to ejoy.  I love these kinds of happy accidents.  A sunny clear sunny would have been better but we didn't let the rain ruin our day!

Some interesting tidbits about Stewart/Hyder.  I had planned to include this while I wrote but it's currently 12:45 am so here they are.  :)

Stewart is Canada's most Northerly, ice free port.

Salmon Glacier is the worlds largest road accessible glacier

Stewart had had 6 major motion pictures filmed here.  I have personally watched one called Insomnia.

I know I mentioned 100 people living here above but I'm getting to tired to find and fix it but the town of Stewart has roughly 500 people living here and Hyder has around 100.  They are considered sister cities despite being separated by a boarder.  The road we drove today is still an active mining road.   

I think that's all I have for tonight.  Time for bed.

I just got done uploading photo's.  It's a bit of a process so I hope everyone is enjoying them.  I'm usually up well past midnight writing the blog and uploading photo's.  I try to put them close to the paragraph I speak about them but sometime's I'm to tired and they are just placed in random.

 Anyways, the photo's of the salmon reminded me that I wanted to talk about them.  I've learned so many amazing things on this trip.  Salmon are pretty cool.  When they are in the ocean they are silver in color.  Once they return to the streams and rivers they change before spawning.   Depending on what kind they are, they will change color.  Also theirs mouths will change from a typical fish shaped mouth into a hooked upper jaw.  Also some will develop a hump on their back.  Different types of salmon have different life spans but they always return to the same stream or river they spawned from.  It's kind of mind blowing to think that they know exactly where to go from ocean to stream.