One of Hyder's biggest tourist attraction is the grizzly bears eating salmon at Fish Creek. We are about 3 miles from there...unfortunately the salmon are not there yet. So we went to the beautiful raised walk way to view bears and viewed a river otter and some baby robins instead. Local experts say the fish are in the creek. They might make it by Friday or it could be another week to 10 days. We thought about waiting until Friday, but other factors made us decide to leave tomorrow.
The road continues to an overlook for Salmon Glacier. The nice paved road ends quickly and our Kawasaki had to prove it's grit again. David did a great job piloting us through soft gravel, ruts, potholes, rain and mud. The glaciers were wonderful. Just amazing!
Most of the road dirt on the bike has been from the top. Today all the under areas were a mess. There was almost an inch thick pile of mud on the bottom of the radiator. So bike hosing off was our evening activity. I got some of the mud off the MH too. We had rain off and on again today. It is on the cool side. We were very glad to have (and wear) the rain pants.
We had about 20 miles of bad, unpaved road to get to the Salmon Glacier overlook. During that 20 miles, we went from sea level to about 3,700 feet in elevation. At the top was the "Bear Man". This 77 year old guy (who could pass for 60) lives up there all summer. He has a small 2 person sized tent and only drives to town once a week for groceries. He sells a bear book he wrote and DVD's of local bears and the glaciers. Very interesting (articulate) person. We bought a book.
The glacier overlook is in British Columbia. No border check point on that road. The International boundary isn't even marked. A couple of guys on dual sport type bikes passed us going up. We couldn't do the speed they were doing at all. We were stopped on the way up to take pictures when they came down. One stopped and offered to take a picture of the two of us. I told him he had a much better bike for the mountain than we did. He laughed and said on the highway, we would be the better equipped ones (which was true).
We went into Stewart (BC) to shop and checkout the museum. We did have to stop for the Canadian border authority. Pretty easy this time. We didn't even have to take off our helmets. We went into two stores and were quite surprised at the meager offerings. Glad we had leftovers, cause none of the meat they offered looked very appealing.
I had thought this would be a good place for the tandem. It was cool and on and off again wet the whole time we were here. A week ago, they had 90° days. I don't think either extreme is to good on the tandem.
We went down to the municipal dock today...a very interesting wood structure, but it is due to be replaced shortly. On the way back, we were at a stop sign and saw a black bear cross the road on the other side of the street we were on. We were told the campground where we are staying was visited by a bear this afternoon. One came by during the night for the previous couple of nights. We were warned to be careful heading to the garbage at night. In fact the night before we got here, a bear tried to get in their garbage. It tore off some of the wood siding off the shed area.
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