Wanderung 29

Alaska or Bust

July 2014 - August 2014

3 Bayo Lake, BC
Williams Lake, BC 4
Index


 

August 4: The Cassiar: Bayo Lake to Mountain Shadow, Yukon

Bob:

Did you know that most of the world's jade is mined at one mountain in northern British Columbia? I surely didn't and was quite surprised, not to say dumbfounded, when a huge "Jade Store" appeared on the shoulder of the road. At first I thought it was just a tourist trap with a novel angle, but then I talked to the guy out front who sold leftover scraps from the mining process. A bag of scraps could be purchased for $20, and I was immediately hooked by that offer. Dry, unpolished jade looks dull, but if you wet it down you see the true color and transparency of the jade, so he sprayed it down for us and we picked pieces that we thought might go into some hand-made jewelry.

Apparently most of the jade mined there is sent to China to be fashioned into jewelry. Some of the finished jewelry was even shipped back to the jade jewelry store there, and we spent a good 1/2 hour looking over many beautiful things and getting some tiny jade things for us and our grandchildren. We also crossed the street to look at the native Indian crafts at that store, which were also very, very nice but a bit out of our price range.

Monika:

The morning sun rise was as pretty as the sunset had been. But we had to pack up and trundle on.

Our first stop was a jade store. You could see large chunks of jade outside. 80% of all jade is mined in British Columbia. But after mining it, they send it to China where it is carved into beautiful pieces, which they sell in the store. We bought presents for the grandchildren a little statue for Bob and earrings for me. Outside they had a big bin and for $20 you could fill a small bag. We picked some nice pieces and overfilled a bag. Fun. Across the street was a store of native art and they had some beautifully carved masks and other things.

Bob:

We continued South through a spectacular but completely deserted landscape, finally stopping for lunch at a small roadside rest area with vault toilets. I was vaguely curious that there were absolutely no mosquitoes pestering us as we had lunch, and when I walked over to the toilet I found out why: suddenly I saw eight beady little eyes staring at me from a swallow's nest somehow glued to the concrete wall just below the roof. Well, they were cute little devils, so I retrieved my camera from the car and very slowly and cautiously came back to photograph them. Apparently the mommy or daddy finally got tired of waiting for me to go, and one of them suddenly just went ahead and swooped in to feed them, hovering in mid air in front of the nest by flapping his/her wings extraordinarily rapidly. How wonderful to get that photographic opportunity! And surely that explained the lack of mosquitoes!

Monika:

On we went. The road was not bad and Bob could easily use the cruise control at 80 km/ h. The scenery was spectacular with one craggy mountain after another and rivers and lakes besides us.

We had lunch at a rest area where we watched swallows darting this way and that keeping us free of mosquitoes. When Bob went to the toilet he saw a nest with 4 hungry mouth peeking out. Ever now and then one of the adults would come by put something into a hungry mouth and fly off, completely ignoring the humans with the camera.

Bob:

Monika took a turn at driving after lunch, so I could sit back and enjoy the scenery a bit. We finally put in for the night at Mountain Shadow campground, one recommended by our guide book. The state parks in Alaska and provincial parks in northern Canada tend to have pit or vault toilets and no showers, so finding a campground that offered flush toilets and showers was a big attraction by this point in our journey!

Although high tourist season, we once again had our choice of campsites and chose one down toward the bathroom complex. The proprietor told us about a trail to a nearby lake, so we walked that for some exercise and were rewarded by not only a nice walk in the woods but also a very pretty, deep blue wilderness lake at the end.

Monika:

After lunch I started driving and what do you know the road got worse and even turned into gravel for a while. But finally I too got a stretch where I could use the cruise control.

Bob drove the last half hour to the campground, Mountain Shadow, that was highly recommended. And indeed it is very nice, with flush toilets and showers and the tent sites away from the big rigs.

There was a nice path down to and along a little lake. It felt good to get some walking in and the scenery was beautiful.



August 5: The Cassiar: Mountain Shadow to Mezidian Lake, Yukon

Bob:

Continuing South, the Cassiar became gradually a better and better highway. Some power lines were being installed, but they only paralleled the highway for a few miles before we were in what looked like complete wilderness again. I was told those power lines were just for local distribution from some power plant in the middle of British Columbia to a couple of nearby towns, but I can't swear to that.

Monika:

We packed up and started driving again. The scenery on this stretch of the Cassiar was outstanding and picture taking a pleasure. The road started having a middle stripe and they were putting in power lines on the side of the road and had a helicopter hovering above them.

We stopped at Bell Lodge for lunch a large resort, store, and restaurant.

Bob:

We detoured off the Cassiar briefly to drive over to the Pacific coast where we wanted to see the twin towns of Stewart, Canada, and Hyder, Alaska. The branch highway to the West wound through the coastal range of mountains and offered many scenic vistas of lakes, glaciers, and snow-covered mountain peaks along the way. I had expected the two towns on the coast, being basically adjacent, to be kind of one town separated by the artificial US-Canada border, but I was completely wrong.

Monika:

At Meziadan lake we turned west to take a side trip to Stewart, Canada, and Hyder, USA. The 65 mile branch road is about as scenic as anything you ever drive, winding its way between two mountain ranges. On one side was a glacier coming all the way down to the road, the Bear Glacier, and on the other side large waterfalls. Of course, we also encountered logging trucks.

Bob:

Stewart, on the Canadian side, was not only much bigger than Hyder, which felt more like a "crossroads" kind of town, but also culturally quite distinct. Stewart felt clean, well-kept, and quintessentially "Canadian" in the sense of being calm, quiet, and civilized in a British way. We found our way around Stewart with relative ease, and they even had a tourist information office to provide us with maps and other local info.

Hyder, on the American side, reminded me of a frontier kind of town in the Western US, but gone slightly to seed. The buildings seemed to be either active or closed saloons, for the most part, and all the buildings on the very short main street had peeling paint, sagging roofs, and just basically looked derelict. I would have been uneasy walking around Hyder at night but would have felt perfectly safe doing so in Stewart.

One curious thing was the border crossing itself. Always before, when I see a US border crossing station I have also seen a Canadian one, and vice-versa. But here the border just had the Canadian crossing station and neither hide nor hair of any US border crossing or Homeland Security agents. Thus, we could cross into Hyder without even pausing, but coming back into Stewart we were stopped and grilled by suspicious Canadian border guards. I'm not sure if they suspected us of smuggling drugs, guns, liquor, or whatever from our 10 minutes in Hyder, but I found the whole experience quite curious.

Monika:

Stewart is the farthest north ice free port in Canada. It seemed to be used mainly to transship logs, which were stored in the water in large rafts. Now I know why I met logging trucks along the road. Stewart is a well maintained small town with little stores along the main street.

A little past the harbor is the Canadian-USA border. There was no CBP agent at the border and no border crossing station. The town of Hyder was seedy or funky looking, with lots of bars. A little out of town was a rather picturesque river which is a salmon river and farther upstream has supposedly bear. We did not see either salmon or bear.

Getting back into Canada we had to stop at the border, where we were questioned about what we had acquired in Hyder. My guess is that they are worried about drugs or firearms coming into Canada. Since our biggest border crossing worry seems to be terrorist or illegal immigrants, our border people seem ok with the idea of those folks going into Hyder from Canada, since there really is no way out except back into Canada!

Bob:

Driving back East to the junction with the Cassiar Highway, we turned South for a few miles to the Meziadan Lake Provincial Park. Up to this point, the campgrounds had pretty much been empty during our trip, so I was surprised to find this one teeming with camping Canadians. The lake itself seems to be the main draw, and all the campsites along the lake and just up the shore from it were already occupied by Canadians, many with RVs and boat trailers.

However, back up the hillside was a set of 5 or so campsites that were quite far from the lake, and all those sites were completely empty. Being just as glad to be separated from the hubbub of the boating crowd, we chose the flattest of the sites on the hillside to set up out tent. Unlike an RV that has leveling "feet", we sleep in the car which sits parallel to the surface of the site, so we always try to pick out the most level site we can fit into.

Monika:

We made one more stop at a very nice liquor store and then drove the scenic road back to Meziadan Lake, a large lake with a nice Provincial Park campground. It was situated with a mountain behind it, a lake in front, and then more mountains in the distance beyond the lake. There were several parking lot type areas directly overlooking the lake but they also had a few higher up that were secluded spaces more to our liking.

Copyright 2014 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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