Day 133 – July 21 – Smithers, British Columbia

We went to Fish Creek again this morning hoping to find grizzly bears eating salmon.  I asked the ranger at the pay booth if the salmon were in the stream.  She said, “We have had three”.  I was hoping she was talking about bears, but it turned out it was salmon.  I talked to another ranger on the boardwalk and he said about 7 last night a male grizzly came down and put on a show catching salmon.  Our timing really sucks!

We drove back to the dump for one last chance to see a bear, but nothing was going on at that location so we returned to the campers and got ready to leave Alaska for the last time on this trip.

It was raining as we pulled out of Camp Run-A-Muck, kind of a reflection of my felling on not getting to see the bears catching salmon at Fish Creek.  We checked through Canadian customs for the last time at the edge of Stewart and headed towards Prince George.  We knew we would not make it all the way to Prince George today; it is about 430 miles from the campground.  Our goal was to get about 200 miles in today and then drive the rest of the way the next day.

We took the Cassiar Highway (highway 37) to the junction with the Yellowhead Highway (highway 16) and turned east.  About this time we hit really hard rain that lasted for about an hour.  We are currently at a city campground in Smithers, British Columbia.  It is a nice campground with real grass!  As the afternoon wore on, the campground got fuller with travelers.