Bears! And Glaciers! and Waterfalls! Oh My!!!!!`

July 19th, 2010 Monday

Vacationing in a "poor man's RV" Not!! (Dang thing cost $2000 plus gas!)..I'm definitely not a cheap date.. I know Gene must have thought seriously (for a second or two) about just getting on his Ultra.. riding off and pretending he didn't know me at all!!! :)

So we rose at 7:00 am.. Genebug brought me coffee while I checked email and replied to a couple. We were on the road by 8:00 am..headed South down the Cassiar toward Stewart BC/Hyder AK. Finally, Gene spotted a black bear grazing by the side of the road. No one behind us so we stopped and backed up and while I filmed him a bit.. Gene caught a couple of pics of him. He just kept eating like we weren't even there. I must admit I felt safer in our "RV" though :) A little further down the road, we spied another black bear walking across a clearing. However, this time we weren't quite so lucky with road traffic. Two vehicles behind us and going too fast to stop and back up.. so we missed filming him but we SAW HIM!! Yeah!!

Our next trip was to turn West on 37A to Stewart. We were rewarded with viewing of hanging glaciers.. the best was Bear Glacier that came all the way down to the lake... They are really quite amazing.. the size of them. Hope we got a couple of good pics and some filming done.

Beautiful scenery! It was about 38 miles to Stewart and Hyder, AK is right there. There was a Fish Creek Bear Viewing platform about 3 miles up this gravel road. Our friend, Charles Simon, had told us about it. He'd had quite a fun time viewing both grizzlies and black bear.. but wouldn't you know it.. it was about 2 weeks early for the fish to be in the creek so no bears:( We didn't see no DANG bears there!!! But we had such a good day with beautiful sunny weather, lots of beautiful flowers, waterfalls, glaciers, bears.. who could complain.. Now I'm just saying...it just don't get no better than this :).

We found a reasonable (cheap as we will find) motel in New Hazelton..not far from the town of Smithers on the Yellowhead (BC 16) highway. We will stop there in Smithers in the morning at the local HD dealer.. then there will be one in Prince George and Kamiloops and Kelownow (?) oh my.. but alas and alack.. we've spent all our money on Uhaul, gas and lodging.. Need to turn this rig in with in four more days.. hope we make it.. Gene is looking for a restaurant.. I will post this and then we will relax.. he doesn't relax until I'm on the bed for the nite snd off the crutches.. later