Day 131 – July 19 – Hyder, Alaska

No rain this morning, just overcast but today we go back into Alaska after a little over 3 days of driving in Canada.  For some strange reason the highway turned into good blacktop surface.  All day yesterday we bounced on the Cassiar Highway.  We bounced so much that an hour after we stopped, my eyeballs finally stopped bouncing up and down! 

We stopped at a rest area and the wild flowers were so pretty that I had to take a couple of pictures.

We drove the Cassiar Highway (highway 37) to the junction of 37A, which took us on the way to Stewart, British Columbia.  We rounded a curve and all the sudden there was a glacier hanging on the mountainside on the left, across a fast moving river.  We took pictures, moved down the road a little ways and there are three more glaciers on the mountains.  They may have been one glacier at one time, but we were told that if they are not joined at the bottom (called the toe) then they have different names.  I don’t have any idea of the names of these, but the blue coloring in the ice was beautiful.

We made it to Stewart after stopping a couple of more times for pictures of water running off the side of the mountains.  These mountains are different from others we have seen on other trips.  They seem to go straight up from the bases.  Some to most of them come to very sharp peaks or ridges.  The taller ones do not have vegetation near the summit – I think it is because of all the snowfall they get here.  The mountain sides are painted with shades of green – the spruce trees are a dark green while the aspen are lighter and the under brush is a little darker than the aspen.

We drove through the “town” of Stewart (all of around 700 people), went over the border into the United States – no border check for the U.S. bound people.

Some shots of Stewart

The town of Hyder is smaller than Stewart, I think Hyder has around 100 people.  There are a couple of stores on Main Street including a General Store and an art gallery. 

We checked into Camp Run-A-Muck and got the last two sewer hookup sites in the campground.  The name of the campground just about says it all.  Another gravel lot that past its prime.

We had lunch at a very interesting place called the Bus.  It is an old school bus they made into a kitchen.  You place your order at the door and then your food is delivered to you inside or on the "patio" outside.  The halibut burger sandwich was outstanding.

We drove to the few shops and looked around at what they had to offer.  At the art gallery the lady had an object called “Ooszie” and told Dorrie she would give her a free post card if she could guess what it was.  She got five questions and then had to guess.  Dorrie quickly determined it was from the sea and was a mammal.  After her questions, Dorrie guessed whalebone.  Turns out it was a walrus penile bone.  Dorrie had been standing there fondling the bone while she was guessing.  She quickly handed the bone back to the lady and started wiping her hands on her pants.  It was really funny and everyone had a good laugh, especially the owner of the shop.

We stopped at a place that sells furs and other things where we found the buttons made from antlers that Dorrie had seen earlier on the trip and had passed up.  The shop had some items made from salmon leather.  They had an information card on the process – it takes 75 steps to turn salmon skin into leather.  I got a new wallet and Dorrie bought a pair of earrings.

Hyder is a strange place – part Canadian and part American.  Everyone except the post office, which only accepts U.S. money, uses money from both countries.  You get back change in the same form as you used to keep things simple.  Another strange thing about Hyder is they observe Pacific time instead of Alaskan time.

We drove to the Fish Creek boardwalk to see if there were any bears, but the ice dam up stream broke earlier in the week and they said it washed the salmon back down the river.  No salmon, no bears.

We drove on towards Salmon Glacier.  The road up to the boardwalk was paved, but turned to gravel at that point.  We looked for wildlife as we drove, but didn’t see anything.  There were large chunks of ice in the river and we took pictures of the ice and some of the water running off the mountain at the side of the road.

The view of Salmon Glacier was awesome!  You were above the glacier, looking down at the surface.  From a distance the surfaces of glaciers appear to be smooth sheets of ice you could slide down.  If you looked closer you could see the spikes and cracks in the surface.  One of the signs said this was from the glacier moving and crevasses being created.  This glacier is the fifth largest glacier in North American and is actually in British Columbia but you have to drive from Alaska to get to it.

After photos we returned home to the camper.  We are starting to get night skies again.  It seems strange after all the time we have had full time light outside.  You have to turn on lights at night if you get up from bed.  Something we haven't had to do in a long time.