When last I blogged, we were in Seward enjoying the good life of playing on the beach, fishing, and just relaxing. We stayed there for about a week and a half before the kids were ready to leave, shortly after the Kenai Fjords cruise. Hey, they couldn't access the internet for the whole time we were there! So we moved out, heading through Palmer and back up towards Tok, where we had previously watched the 4th of July parade. (If you drive to and from Alaska, Tok is the town you must pass through both directions.) We stayed two nights in the Sourdough Campground there, having a great time, enjoying their evening entertainment. Colton and I enjoyed the pancake toss, both getting our pancake in the bucket and earning a free breakfast in the campground's restaurant. We then continued out of Alaska and back into the Yukon. We stayed the next evening in Haines Junction. The mosquitos in the campground were rather fierce, and I was the only one to venture outside to hook-up, and later to get to the Wi-Fi hotspot in the laundry room. That was enough, we enjoyed mosquito bites for several days just from the couple of times I quickly opened and closed the door. I actually saw a couple of people walking around with mosquito nets over their heads... We had cable TV here, and oddly enough there were a couple of Seattle stations on their cable. That was just weird being that far away from home and watching the local news.
Anyway we continued retracing our path along the AlCan until we reached the Cassiar highway (Hwy 37 I think?) We then headed south and back into British Columbia. Once again we were on a pretty desolate route. No power poles and very few vehicles or people. Our first evening on the Cassiar we stayed at a campground on Joe Irwin Lake.
Once again, no power, only generators for the campground's use. We got a site right on the lakeshore. Everyone had a great time sitting around the campfire and taking a paddleboat out on the lake. The next day we stopped at Dease Lake for food and groceries and I spoke with a NWCMP Officer who was in plain clothes fueling up his Expedition. He was going to get new tires on his work rig... Seven hour trip to Whitehorse to get tires! We steadily worked our way down the Cassiar to the cut-off road to Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK.
What's so special about Hyder, Alaska you might ask? Well, how about a National forest Service site which has a raised deck walkway along Fish Creek? Where you can watch Brown Bears feeding on salmon mere feet away? Pretty cool, eh? Unfortunately, the salmon hadn't really come in, and in the morning we saw only eagles, no bears. We continued up the gravel road to the Salmon Glacier, which was quite a sight.
Eventually, we turned around and stopped again at Fish Creek. After a few minutes, a juvenile brown bear walked out of the brush downstream of us and began walking up toward us. It was pretty cool, watching this young guy being really paranoid, afraid that an older bear might show
up and chase him away. Unfortunately, that was it for the bears, and we headed home. Although, it's really not that far to go back up to Stewart and Hyder again some time, hopefully when there are more bears present. The rest of the trip back was relatively uneventful, as we were traveling through much more civilized areas. We were very happy to see the relatively low gas prices once back in the good ol' US of A. Quite the trip, and we would highly recommend it if you get the chance...
