Stewart to Prince Rupert

True to form, as we left Stewart around 10 am, we quickly come across another black bear.  This bear did not seem to be in very good condition.  Clumps of hair on his back, thin, and probably just kicked out by mama to fend for itself.  it walked from the left side of the highway to the right, and off into the woods.  My pictures did not come out nearly as good as Marcia’s did…this one was the best view of it.  As quickly as it appeared, it was quickly gone.

Marcia also got this nice picture of bear river as it run toward Stewart and into the Pacific.  With all the glaciers, this river runs pretty fast all summer long.

She also got some great shots of Bear Glacier with the blue glacier ice even when the sun is not shining directly on it.

Those mountains on both sides of Glacier Highway are sure nice to look at…hard to keep your eyes on the road.  Soon we were back on the Cassiar Highway.

    

On the Cassiar we follow the Nass River for much of the way to Kitwanga, where we were planning to stay the night.  As with other rivers in this area, there are lots of lakes and creeks which are associated with the river system.

There are few communities along the Cassiar…two places to get gas during the entire 120 miles we covered.  A few times I had to drive the speed limit (62 MPH / 100 KPH) due to cars or trucks behind me…but mostly I like to travel at 45 to 50 so that I too could enjoy the scenery.  Also, if a moose or bear jumped out at the last moment, it is easier to miss them at this speed.

A short three hour drive and we are at the end of the Cassiar Highway, and we pull into the Petro-Canada at the intersection with the Yellowhead Highway that we will be taking over to Rupert the next day.

We then backtrack over to the Cassiar R V Park in Kitwanga, passing back over the Skeena River which we will follow all the way to Prince Rupert.  I did not get any pictures of the RV park, but it was a nice little park.  At first I thought we were not going to be able to stay there because their Internet was down, and we did not have a signal on our aircard at first…but it turned out we had 2-3 bars of fast 3G as we drove through to park to leave...so we ended up staying after all.  Most 3G in Canada is much faster than the 3G in the states, and I was able to post two blogs about the Cassiar that I had written previously, and I worked on another that night which I posted the next day.  We also had dinner at a nice little restaurant in town there, I think it was called the 37 Grille.  Food was good, service was friendly, but this year old restaurant does need to set it priorities toward service to the customers.  One waitress had to cover ten tables, and three take out orders while we were there…yet the lady owner was in the kitchen with a cook, a food prep cook, and a busboy/dishwasher who only came out to bus one table, leaving three others dirty, while we were there.  Four in the back while only one out front…not the way to run a restaurant in our opinion.

As we leave the park the next morning around 9 am, we get this shot of the Seven Sisters Peaks of the Hazelton Mountains.  I am sure, depending upon the weather, that we will get a better shot of these mountains on our way back from Prince Rupert.

    

      

With the Skeena River to our right for most of the trip, Marcia can’t put the camera down.  It is another gorgeous drive, but it has more traffic than the Cassiar Highway had, that is for sure.

At the town of Terrace, we pass over the river, and it is now on my side for the rest of the trip…and we start coming into the Coast Mountain Range again. 

   

    

The view after the town of Terrace is better than the view before…but the entire drive is real, real nice.  So many of these nice drives…it is going to be hard to drive across Nevada in a few months on our way back to Kansas City to see my son.

Yep, it was one heck of a pretty drive…and guess what…we “have” to drive right back through it to get home since we are not one of the many who come to Prince Rupert to catch a Canadian Ferry to Vancouver Island…a 16 hour trip to Port Hardy, with an additional 2 hour sitting in line and loading onto the ferry, all to save around 600 miles of driving.  Heck, I can drive 600 miles in 18 hours…and “if” we were to do it, it would cost around $2,000 compared to $250 to drive it.

We finally get to Kaien Island where Prince Rupert is at.  This is a shot of the Hecate Strait from a pullout once you get onto the Island. 

Prince Rupert has one RV park, with another RV park located in Port Edward, about 15 miles away.  Without cell phones, I could not call…and it was hard to decide which one to go to first.  I choose Prince Rupert RV Park, and it was crowded because there were many RVs in the park getting ready to get on the Ferry Wednesday morning.  We were able to get a “dry camping” spot for the night, and then move to a full service spot this morning (Wednesday).  It was fine, but you can hear each and every RV leaving from 4:45-5:15.  Since we did not have power, we decided to go out to eat Tuesday night, and ended up going to Theaann’s Greek Palace, located in the Pacific Inn.  Now normally we don’t eat at restaurants associated with a motel/hotel…but yelp gave Theaann's Greek Palace Restaurant 4 stars.  Well, we couldn’t agree more…all the food was homemade, and tasted real good.  We had a platter for two which gave us an assortment of many of their foods.  Wow, some of it was even better than what we get back home in Tarpon Springs.  Had leftovers that we brought home and we added some Salmon from Alaska and some lemon shrimp, and had another great meal tonight.  It is a husband and wife team running the restaurant, and he is Greek, and came out and talked with Marcia for a few minutes.  Looks like they are going to shut down in November though because the Hotel has raised their rent to a level they cannot sustain.  That's too bad...hate to see another "home cook" style restaurant going out of business...especially one this good.

Three More Bears (ok, one was a Glacier) – Cassiar Highway (day 2, pt. 2)

    

We met up this guy at the Meziadin Junction.  He seemed to be playing “hide and seek” with vehicles which passed by…but by the time we got up to him he was in definite “hiding mode” because he turned around and off he went.

This is “Bear Glacier” (above and left), which is right along the road to Stewart/Hyder.  Look at those various colors of blue in glacier…we had not seen that much blue in a glacier before.  The picture to the left is a close up of the middle section.  Not really sure where the blue comes from, but the “dirt” comes off the walls around the glacier during rain storms.

This big guy was not too far from Stewart, our destination for the next three nights.  He let me drive right by him…but I did not dare stop next to him.  Why?  See those teeth??  That’s why.  But again I have jumped way to far into our trip…let’s go back to where we saw the mama bear stand up to protect her cubs…

After we saw mama bear and cubs, we continued along the Cassiar Highway.  I got to hand it to Marcia, despite her right shoulder hurting, she continued to take lots of wonderful shots during the two days from Watson Lake to Stewart/Hyder.  Remember, Stewart is in British Columbia, Hyder is in Alaska.  This little lake is just north of what they call “Bell 2”, a resort, right near where the Bell Irving River crosses under the Cassiar Highway.

Note:  Our destination is Stewart/Hyder. The bigger town is Stewart, and it has the better RV Park.  These two towns, though accessible by car, are way out in the nowhere land.  Verizon Cell Coverage is ZIP.  Most Internet is by satellite and is slow, and cost the user (RV park) lots of $$$, so they restrict usage to 2 hours every 24 hours, and limit total use to 40 megs…which means you cannot do anything at all.  Anyway, that is why I had to wait until we got back to a Verizon area where we can use our aircard…so this post (part 2) is being written 150 miles south of Stewart in a small Canadian town called Kitwanga.  The last two post, although they were posted from here, I wrote while we were in Stewart.

Here is the Bell Irving River near Bell 2.  This is in the heart of Skeena Mountains, and it is a very pretty area.  There is a RV park in this area that looked ok as we drove by…but their Internet is pretty much non-existent too.  We have now been on the road for 100 miles since we left Mountain Shadow RV Park.

 

    

 
And now we are at Meziadin Junction where we saw bear #4 for the day, 40 miles from our destination in Stewart.  For these 40 miles we will be on the “Glacier Highway”, officially called Highway 37A.  Should be less than an hour away…but no, it takes us a good 90 minutes to cover these 40 miles…

We drive along Meziadin Lake, although you can’t get a good picture of the lake alongside the road, and come to the eastern portion of the Coast Mountain Range which we will be driving through to get to Stewart/Hyder.  The Coast Mountain Range extends from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbia. 

      

We quickly see why the call it the Glacier Highway.

And that’s when we come to Bear Glacier.  This is the Bear Glacier in British Columbia, and not the on in Alaska.  Back in the 1940’s it covered the lake shown in the third picture in the post.  When it did, the lake would dam under the glacier, and eventually burst, pouring water down the Bear River Valley.  In the 1970’s the glacier stopped covering the lake.

 

    

I think they could also have called this highway “Waterfalls Highway”, because there are a bunch of them along the road.  The top picture is near Bear Glacier, the other two are just down the highway.  The one on the right is a closeup of the top of the one on the left.  Although there is a sheet of ice running along the top, two waterfalls are split off from the large rock with a lot of water running down each fall.  This is all from the same snow pack on Otter Mountain, which contains the Bear Glacier.  I assume the ice sheet is part of Bear Glacier.

This glacier may be part of Bear Glacier too…just not sure.  The lack of signs providing information, and the lack of information on the websites just makes it hard to determine.

A few more miles down the road and we cross over Bear River, take a left and pull into Bear River RV Park.  We did not have reservations, but they had a spot for us for three nights.  More about the RV Park and the Stewart/Hyder area in my next post.

It took us two days to get from Watson Lake to Stewart/Hyder area.  It took three posts, of which this is the third posting.  If you missed the first two, you can find them by clicking the below links:

Cassiar Highway is Breathtaking – and a Moose with a Calf

When a Bear says STOP! – Cassiar Highway (day 2, pt. 1)