Day 117: Stewart and Hyder

August 9, 2014

We picked a nice gravel roadside turnout just south of the Deltaic Creek bridge as our place to spend the night last night.  It was nice and level, off the road enough to decrease road noise and you could hear the water tumbling over the rapids just a few yards away in the river.  It was like so many other safe places to park along the highway.  Or so we thought.....

That was until the early morning hours when Scout started alerting to something.  At first we fussed at him to just go back to sleep.  He lay back down as he was told.  But within moments he was up again sniffing and wagging his tail and going to the door.  We thought “is there a bear or moose outside??”   Max was dressed and out the door – looking to see if he could see anything.  Everything was normal outside ...or so it seemed.  Back inside we again tried to get Scout to calm down and go to sleep.  He did just that for a short period of time - just long enough for us to dose back off.  Then we were all up again. We have learned that Scout is an indiscriminant alerter – he alerts to a bear the same as he alerts to a squirrel or a mouse. This time after searching around and under the rig, we found mice.  Some of them were running around on the undercarriage.  This immediately brought visions of chewed electrical wires and being stranded in the wilderness.  We loaded a mouse trap with peanut butter and while it was still in Max's hand as he tried to place it under Fred, one of the varmints came over and sniffed it and turned away.  After placing it another sniffed it and turned away.  Guess Canadian mice do not like Peter Pan Honey Roasted Peanut Butter.  Now what to do?  We didn't know how many mice, but we saw at least the three.  What if some had gotten inside?  Evidently Scout could hear them running around on the undercarriage.  He was sniffing all inside the rig and wanting outside.  Not being able to stand the thought of a mouse infestation, we cranked Fred in hopes of scaring them off.  However, by now we were wide awake and what if we had parked on a nest of the awful things??  We quickly read ahead in our Milepost and found a large PAVED rest area 20 miles on toward Hyder.  It didn't take long to put away the few things that were out and we were out of there.  Then, just as we got on the road we both thought, -  “it's so dark.”  We haven't driven in darkness since April 14.  We always find our parking place/campground for the night and get set up well before dark.  We can't remember when we have driven the coach after dark.  So with a quick prayer, we started our search for the new rest area.  God blessed us and we did not even meet a single vehicle along the 20 miles and the rest area was fairly easy to find and pull in.  We got parked again about 4:30am.  Scout seemed to approve of the new location and immediately went to sleep.  Hopefully that means we left all the varmints 20 miles away and none of them wanted to hitch a ride back to Alabama.  Guess time will tell.  

We did go back to sleep – finally and when we got back up, it was cloudy and we had rain pretty much continuously all day.  YUK!  There is actually a special weather statement for our area with the possibility of 3-6 inches of rain this weekend.  DOUBLE YUK!!  It is quite cool and damp.  The furnace is on tonight.  We are in Seward, BC which joins Hyder, AK at the Bear River RV Park.

On the way to Hyder today we saw huge areas of fire weed.  Very pretty.  Also lots of really tall water falls with enormous amounts of water flowing.   There were low clouds with misting rain the entire drive.  We passed Bear Glacier, with wonderful shades of blue, but the colors don't show well in the pictures due to the lack of sunlight.  Maybe we can take pictures again on our way back to the Cassiar Highway next week. 

After getting set up at Bear River, and having lunch, we headed to Fish Creek to see the salmon and the bears they attract.  Here is a long raised walkway with high sides to protect the people from the bears and the bears from the people. 

Yes, it was still raining but yes, we are crazy enough to go take pictures of bears in the rain.  We waited for a couple of hours with the only thing to watch was spawning salmon.  After little sleep last night that didn't hold our attention very long.  We met and talked with several photographers – ones with huge cameras and lens to photograph the bears.  We all shared our favorite places to visit and photograph wildlife, talked about Alaska and cameras.

Fish parts litter the banks

It was cool to see all the salmon in the very shallow river.  However, once again in low light our pictures don't do it justice.  Hopefully we can get some better ones over the next couple of days.  Finally, a young grizzly bear came splashing up the river.  He was probably 3 years old so not too big but certainly not a cub and very good at catching fish.  We got some pretty good pictures and video of the fishing and eating of salmon by the bear. 

By then we were cold and wet and decided to call it a day and head back to the coach to get warm.  The photographers told us we should be back out there early in the morning because early and later were the times to be there.  Early is 6:00 am and late is like 7 or 8:00 at night just as it is getting dark.  We are not going back tonight.  We just got warm.  We will see how early we get there tomorrow. 

By the way, we have free internet here at Bear River RV Park.  However, what they don't tell you when they advertise free WIFI is that you only get 50mb per day and that 50 is very slow.  Therefore, we will probably be posting minimal pictures with these blogs, if we can post at all and then when we have good internet again we will go back and add pictures.  We will let you know when we add the pictures so you can go back and see them.  It is 8:30 pm, but after the night we had last night it is time for bath and bed.