Onward to Stewart BC and Hyder AK

7/27/14

Headed toward Stewart/Hyder south on the Cassiar Hwy 37.  Going south, the road was pretty rough in a few places.  Saw 1 sow bear with 2 cubs, 1 fox and several ptarmigans alongside the road.  Stopped for the night at Rancheria Motel/RV Park, doesn't look like much, in fact it is real easy to miss.  A small  place, nice level spaces with power and water and super nice people in the cafe.  When we got there we both had a bowl of Split Pea Soup, excellent soup.  About 24 bicycle riders where just arriving to spend the night and there had been 25 the night before.  There were also several motorcyclist camped. The place is not much to look at but I would definitely stay here again.


7/28/14

After Rancheria the road started to get better, in fact it eventually had fog lines and a yellow line down the middle. Stayed at Mt Shadow RV Park just north of Iskut, BC, probably one of the prettiest well manicured places we stayed at.  The sites were perfect, large areas of lawn and hundreds of well kept flowers around the house.  When you register you walk into the owners beautiful kitchen with a view of a lake and tall snow scattered mountain peaks all around.  This deserves a 10+ rating, however I never took the time to look at the bathrooms/showers

7/29/14
Continued on into Stewart/Hyder and staying at Camp Run-A-Muck, the last place in Hyder.  A nice quiet place with many pull-thrus in the woods or in the open.  Good showers, (3 loonies even though we were in Alaska)  Nice laundry, only takes US quarters.  Only Alaskan town on Pacific Standard Time, except for the Post office, they are on Alaskan Time Zone, but the National Park further down the road is on Pacific Standard time.  You just have to know where you are going to know what time time zone you are in.  A very nice gentlemen, Sully  checked us in, we have power, water and wi-fi that is very iffy and then not at all.  Another gorgeous drive through narrow canyons, waterfalls, many creeks and Bear Glacier which we were able to get a couple of pictures through the rain.  I might be able to get better pictures when we leave.
We have been driving for three days, longer than what we usually like; when we leave here we will be driving for five or six days to home so we will spend two nights here in Hyder to rest up.  Hyder is the last Alaskan town we will be in for this trip.  When we leave here we will go to Smithers or Houston for the first night and then continue driving every day to home.  In 2011 we drove to Prince Rupert so
we already know what the roads look like from Smithers to home.

B

Bear Glacier

Park next to Visitor Center in Stewart, B C

Later we will drive out to Tongass National Park to Salmon Creek to see if there are any bears there.  They are open from 6am until 10 pm, Pacific Time.

More about that on the next blog.

Have a great day.

Nancy

Valdez to Skagway

7/19 - 7/23
Valdez to Tok to Destruction Bay to Carcross to Skagway
Mostly very good weather with a few sprinkles now and then

More outstanding scenery, road construction and very bumpy roads.  From Tok to Destruction Bay, (D-Bay to the locals) was about 250 miles that took us nine hours, which 45 min was waiting for a pilot car.  This was the longest we have been on the road since we left home, and the dirtiest. Luckily there was a car wash in Carcross.  We only stayed overnight at Tok, Destruction Bay and Carcross so not much going on.

New Snow in mountains above Destruction Bay

What a mess going through all that construction.  

The stuff wanted to stick like glue, very hard to wash off.

Entrance to Haines Junction

Village Bakery, several streets off the main hwy, but we found it

Had delicious sticky buns, our first on the entire trip 

Emerald Lake, see description next picture

Waiting for a pilot car again, note the clean trailer

Just after the White Pass summit of about 3,500' 

going down steep canyon all the way to Skagway

I have been without internet for a long time, then when we arrive to our campground in Skagway we have no phone, no internet, no water.  More on that tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by

Nancy

Valdez

7/15 - 7/18/14
Bear Paw Campground
Nice & warm to cold & windy

A very long blog (too many pictures), I just have a hard time sorting through the pictures to see which ones I'm going to use on the blog.

Valdez is probably the most gorgeous small port town that we have been to, majestic mountains to beautiful water, some clear and sparkling and other waters were glacier waters.  Mountains all around us, with glaciers and or ice/snow packs.

I must give a "good plug" to the folks at Bear Paw RV Campground.  We came in and paid for our 4 nights, which included EWS, good cable, excellent internet and free showers, what more could you ask for.  Well there was one more thing....Joe scheduled a fishing trip for Saturday, the day we were leaving so we extended our time for 2 more nights (after a 12 hr day of fishing he would have needed a day to recover).  The Campground had a large caravan coming in but he just put them on both sides of us so we wouldn't have to move.

Saturday came, up at 0530, make his lunch and snacks for a 12 - 13 hr day, a breakfast burrito, helped him get his rubber boots on ( I think he needs ones a little larger), jump in the truck at 0620 and head on down to the dock, I-20, The Misty Isle.  Joe wanted me to just drop him off, but I wanted to take pictures of the captain, crew and boat, so we both walked out to I -20.  We were the first ones there, we were told to meet at 0645 for a 0700 time to leave.,  Others started showing up but no captain. He finally came at 0650, kind of late, since he still had to warm up the engine and do a safety check, (I'm thinking).

To back up a little; I had been checking www.wunderground the day before and then early in the morning, and it didn't look too good.  There were warnings out for Homer, Kodiak, Seward and Valdez.  It was called something like a 1 - 2 punch weather system coming in.  Storm from the northwest and a storm from the southwest were coming together, and it wasn't going to be pretty with seas 1 - 3 foot close in and out in Prince William Sound 3 - 5 foot seas.  High wind warnings.  Weather systems change very fast and very unpredictable here.  When we walked out on the dock there was no wind, high clouds and not cold. So we thought there was another change in the weather.

So, back to my story about the Captain being late.  He had been busy checking the various weather stations for the area and talking to a freighter coming in.  There were now gale warnings and 3 - 5 foot seas out close to Prince William Sound, which is where we were headed (about a 2 1/2 hr trip from Valdez) and they were predicting  5 - 7 foot seas by noon in Prince William Sound.  So the Captain explained all this to everyone, we said he could use the money but it would be impossible to fish bouncing around out there, he advised us to not go.  Everyone agreed with him and thanked him for being up-front and honest.  Of course everyone was given a refund.

Now back to my "good plug" to the folks at Bear Paw Campground.  We had already paid for the two extra days and most campgrounds say "no refund" for leaving early.  I told the Campground mgr what happened, and he immediately said no problem and we got a refund.

The Captain explaining to us about the weather and seas.













We were going to go on a helicopter trip and land on a glacier, but the only opening was for Saturday, the day Joe was to go fishing.  So we relaxed in Valdez by going to a museum of Valdez which was very interesting, also drove over to the other side of the port where there is a fish hatchery and the terminal of the Valdez oil pipe.

Salmon Creek Hatchery

These fish have to really work hard to get to the ladder.

The gulls here are the largest I have ever seen.  That is a good size fish he has there.

The creek behind the bridge.  The water pipe at the bottom left is coming from a water system and dam area up on the hill.  The water is piped over to this area that would be a dry creek bed if the water was not piped in.

Looking across the water to Valdez

I guess this didn't come out very good, the large tanks are on the left and their dock is on the other side of that little mound of a hil on the middle right side of picture.  And of course is is low tide.
The oil tank farm is very large and hard to get a good picture at this angle.







Another picture, a little better.

If you look through these flowers on the left the same hill as stated above.

I took this picture because of the red branch, I later found out that is is called sheep's beard, because it has long white blooms that have already bloomed.

Pilot boats heading over to the oil tank farm, they will soon be taking a ship out to sea

The Prince William Sound is to the Left about 2 1/2 hrs away by boat.

Magpie, very pretty color.s















Back over to the Valdez side and a drive through Old Valdez, nothing there except a couple of deep water docks.  I guess you will need a magnifying glass to read about this.

Along road

The Valdez Museum had this cute fishing boat outside

Life saving boat that was used in 1980 when a cruise ship had a broken pipe and started taking on water,

Sorry for the blurry picture, this is the North Pacific Fur Fish.

These pictures are for you Alex

This is a dwarf Fireweed, it's a bush.

These are usually white so I thought I should take a picture of pink ones.

I don't remember the name, but it is a very common wildflower.

Same thing in white

Just regular weeds, oops I mean
wildflowers.

Valdez is surrounded with mountains.  We only had one clear day while here.

Mineral Creek, and lots of hiking trails up this canyon

The crossing of Mineral Creek.

That's it for Valdez, luckily we had already been out on a glacier-nature tour while in Seward because the weather just wasn't very good for us in Valdez.  However we have been very blessed with excellent weather 99% of our trip that started May 14th.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great day.

Nancy