One of our best days in Alaska

August 9 – Today the adventure was going to see bears fishing in a river close by.  Actually the forest service in Hyder, Alaska is about 12 miles and they built a viewing area for people to come and watch the bears “fish”.  We drove in a “follow the leader” mode as the Wagonmasters were paying for the tickets to get us in so we needed to all arrive pretty much on time.

The boardwalk is pretty long and goes from just behind the ranger station and runs parallel to the river.  We could immediately see the salmon swimming all over the river.  There were some dead one who had laid their eggs and then die.  The whole way the salmon breed, lay eggs and die is kinda sad.

There was not a huge group on the boardwalk and we rode with Dave and Donna so we hung out for about an hour with no bear sightings.  They gave us return tickets for tonight to come back and see if the dinner hour worked better for us.

Oh, there is no Canada border crossing office when you enter Hyder but we did have to show passports to go back to BC.  Actually we had to refile on the Arrive Canada website to go back this evening.

We did take some photos of the salmon laying eggs and fussing with each other.  Then back in Canada we stopped at a couple of the shops but didn’t find anything of real interest. 

After dinner we headed back to the bear viewing with Dave and Donna.  I went straight to the very end of the boardwalk where you could see quite a way down the river.    There is no way to know what direction the bears will be coming from.  There were not many people there when we arrived but it ove sure got crowded by the time we left.

A couple of the ladies from our group hung out with me and Bill kinda moved around from spot to spot.  I can’t tell you how exciting it was when I saw the black bear straight in front of me but a ways down the river.  I took a lot of photos of the bear and he gradually moved closer to us.  By that time people were jam packed at our end and Bill was behind me as well.  I stayed as long as I wanted and there were some negative comments that people should move once they get their pictures so others can get some.  Maybe I was not generous enough but I had waited a lot longer to be in that spot and was just lucky that the bear came from that end.  Once I got enough pictures to picked a tiny lady to take my spot so she could see and we headed out.  Dave and Donna were ready when we were and we were all excited that we got to see the bear slaughtering the salmon for his dinner. 

We did our stop at the customs station and went back to the campground.  It stays light here until about 9:30 but it had been a long day.  We set up our time frame to leave in the morning behind Dave and Donna after dumping our tanks at the city dump station.

Seeing a bear catching fish and eating his dinner was a great way to end our trip.  We now only have 2 more nights with the group and then we all head our separate ways.  Not looking forward to the good-byes.