Hider, Alaska

 

We pulled into Hyder,Alaska on Wednesday, June 27 and went back in time.  A time where there is no crime, except for the bears trying to get into the garbage.  A time when there is no false pretenses about much of anything.  Nature at it’s most original.  No phones, no street lights – lucky to have a few stop signs.  No pavement; just muddy, dirt streets.  And we LOVE it!

Today, we drove for miles and miles (it seemed) up into the coastal mountains on a horrible, pot-holed, narrow, muddy and according to Connie, “scary” road to see a glacier.  We said to each other half way up, “This glacier better be worth it”, and was it ever!   We climbed so high that we actually looked down on the glacier.  We were told that some of the cracks in the ice (crevices) are 100 feet deep.  Through the rain and low-lying clouds, we could see the ice field climb even higher and out of sight.  Amazing sight.  Amazing feeling looking at it and trying to absorb what we were seeing.

Connie’s Lesson for the day is:  Do not wear an alpaca jacket in the rain.  People will turn up their noses.

We ain’t seen any bear.  Just bear scat, and it ain’t pretty.  I think all the bear in this area leave their mark on the road instead of in the forest.  Hyder lies between the coastal mountains and the ocean and it is in a rain forest.  Very lush and very wet.  Hasn’t stopped raining since before we got here.  Tomorrow, on to Dease Lake, back in B.C.