Blog
Stewart and Hyder
June 01, 2023 to June 04, 2023I decided to make my first detour off the highway to go to Stewart. It's only about 45 minutes 1 way off the highway.
Before heading out, I took another silly drone video from my camp spot. Now I'm done with these weird 360 video ones... gotta start trying to make good videos :P
On the way towards the turn off, I decided to walk into the woods and found this nice little waterfall. The mosquitos were pretty bad, so I better rush back to the Van and keep driving!
Another stop right at the turn off was this place by a river, with more mountain views. I stayed here and finished out my workday on Friday.
The drive... oh my, the drive was stunning. The whole way was driving with mountains on both sides, I made some stops along the way and tried to capture some of it, but it's so hard!
Another attempt at a drone video... I went too fast, but it still shows the scenery so I'm gonna include it!
Bear glacier! I read a sign that was describing when this glacier was bigger and damned the lake in, when the lake got high enough the glacier would actually start to float and the lake would drain underneath it causing a flood. Then it would settle back down and the lake would start filling up again. 🤯
I made it to Stewart, it was pretty late so I got a site at the campground and took a stroll around the small town including a little boardwalk on the estuary.
The next morning I decided to go to Hyder and to see the Salmon Glacier. I started by stopping by the one bakery in town to get a coffee and a salmon bagel (gotta have a theme for the day :P)
I crossed into Hyder, oh my, I'm in America and a new timezone :O Theres no border crossing to get into Hyder it's a tiny town with no real way to get to the rest of Alaska. I drove out to the end of the pier to for a beautiful view of Portland Canal. From here you can see Hyder and Stewart about the same distance away.
along the side of the road there were posts sticking up with bird houses on them. The posts were apparently from one of the original gold rush settlements where they built a town on piles here.
Hyder only really has two stores, Caroline's gift shop and a seafood shop. In the morning I stopped by Caroline's and got some fudge. Someone had yelled at her earlier in the day, so we had a great time cursing and being jovial. We covered a lot of ground from printers being awful, to different business schemes she has had. We got to talking about bears and she ended up taking me over to her houses porch to see her bear deterrent board. She left me with advice to pee around my campsites, but to make sure I walk backwards so I don't pee on myself. All and all a lovely way to start my day :)
The big tourist attraction in Hyder is the fish creek boardwalk where from July to August you can watch Grizzlies eating salmon from the river. There are no fish at this time of year, so not the same attraction for bears but I still took a little stroll along the boardwalk.
To Salmon Glacier! It is a bit of a drive down a forest service road. There is a viewpoint at the end which people fawn over, but unfortunately at this time of year you still can't drive all the way because as you can see I had to stop driving here because the road was covered in about 6 feet of snow. You can still see the glacier, and the rainy drive was worth it in it's own right :)
Along the drive I found some abandoned equipment rusting away, and I'm a sucker for rust so I had to hop out and take some photos.
The seafood place mentioned earlier, all she had was chowder... so I got some chowder!
And back to Stewart! I crossed through Canadian customs and was back. I met a fellow who was traveling from Victoria in his sprinter, which he mainly used for transporting musical instruments as he taught music in schools (the reason he was in Stewart). he showed in the side door of his van and it was floor to ceiling drums and other instruments, fun! :D
Before leaving Stewart I did a small hike around town where there were some massive Spruce trees.
This photo really doesn't capture it, but this mountain was covered in ribbons of waterfalls... it looked otherworldly.
Final stop on my way out was a recreational site to make a coffee for the drive, but I noticed there was a row boat free to use by anyone so I had to go out for a little row!
