Stewart-Hyder

Day 66  Friday August 19, 2016                Kitwanga, British Columbia              Cassiar RV Park, site 5

187 towing miles            11.3 mpg

Before leaving this morning we wanted to check out the laundry facility at Meziadin Junction.  It was only a mile away.  It’s a gas station, worker barracks, mess hall advertising as a café.  The laundromat was the laundry facility for the barracks.  The place was run by First Nation.  We bought gas and left.

We were already to go, just needed to connect the truck to the trailer.  We left Meziadin Lake P.P. at 07:55.  We headed for Stewart-Hyder about 30 miles away.  Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK are sister towns located at the end of a long fjord off the Pacific Ocean.  Stewart is the larger of the two towns.  Both are very small.  They are at the end of a 32 mile paved road (BC-37A) off the Cassiar Highway.  It was a beautiful drive with high mountains, glaciers, and glacial rivers and creeks, and numerous waterfalls coming off the mountains.  Here’s some pictures along the Stewart Highway.

The Bear Glacier

The Bear Glacier Zoomed In

The Bear Glacier Zoomed in Even More.  Note the blue tints of the ice.

We were hoping to get laundry done there if we could.  Also wanted to wash the mud off the truck and trailer.  There were several RV parks in both communities.  But these were not the reason for going there.  We wanted to see the scenery and most of all see the National Recreation Area Wildlife Viewing Area platform where we could watch bears eat spawning salmon up Fish Creek. 

We went to the viewing platform and there was lots of spawning salmon in the stream.  They were pink salmon and chum salmon.  There was a walkway from the RV parking lot to the viewing platform entrance that followed the stream.  Then we had to pay a fee ($6 CAD or $5 USD) to enter.  I paid in CAD because I hadn’t put US dollars in my wallet yet.  There was a log of bear sightings and the last bear was at 05:50 AM.  We got there at 09:00 AM and stayed about 1-1/2 hours, but no bears.  Lots of salmon, alive and dead.

The warning to stay on the walkway so bears don't get us.

Fish creek flows alongside this walkway.  It was full of spawning salmon.

A pink salmon in its spawning colors.  They also have a hump on their backs.

A pink salmon swishing the gravel aside to lay her eggs.

A chum salmon in its spawning colors.  In the ocean they are silver.  We

called these camouflage fish because they looked like they were wearing camo.

Our time spent here was very interesting watching the salmon

spawn.  Too bad we saw no bears while we were there.

Here’s some photos of the Stewart-Hyder metropolitan area:

When you first enter Hyder, the buildings are all abandoned except a bar. 

Its a ghost town.  As you continue, there are some gift shops, an

RV park, some dumpy houses and not much else.

Another view of Hyder.

This is the harbor.  There was a ship there.

There were lots of logs floating in the harbor.  There were a lot

of logging trucks on the Stewart Highway going towards

Hyder.  Maybe they are exported from here.

Downtown Stewart.  They actually had a grocery store, two RV

parks, some bars and resturants, residential areas, gas station, laundry, and motel.

When we crossed into Hyder from Stewart, we crossed an international boundary.  There was no US customs to pass through to enter Hyder.  But returning into Stewart we went through Canadian customs.  It was the easiest border crossing I ever had.  We were in Hyder about 2 hours.

We decided to move on to Cassiar RV Park in Kitwanga, B.C.  It’s about 150 miles further down the Cassiar Highway.  They have a laundry, hookups, and an RV wash.  Everything we need.  We arrived at 14:00. 

We were starved when we got there.  After setting up we went into Kitwanga to a café that was recommended by the campground owner.  It was a very nice place to relax and hang out.  They had a good menu and good service.  It was called the 37 Grill.  The Cassiar Highway is B.C. route 37.  It was decorated with antiques and old Canadian license plates from the various provinces.  Marsha had nachos and I had the two-piece halibut fish and chips.  It was OK.  Not as good as what I had in Whitehorse.

This was a really cool place.  Everywhere you looked was antiques,

old license plates, Harley Davidson memorabilia, etc.

Note the tin ceiling.

This was at the end of the bar, next to where I was sitting.

This is what a $10 bottle of beer looks like.  At least it was a 650 ml bottle. (21 oz.)

Some of the old license plates behind the bar.

Northwest Territories have pretty cool license plates.  We saw

some of these when we were in Alaska and the Yukon.

Back at the campground we did laundry.  We needed to really bad.  Took us two hours.  Having a laundry at the campground is nice because you can sit at the campsite while it’s washing and drying.

We planned the rest of our route through British Columbia down into Washington.  It will take us two more days to get to the U.S. border.