A Sunday Drive to Hyder

Hyder is a small town that is about as far East as it’s possible to be and still be in Alaska.  It is also about the southern-most town (Ketchikan is further south, but you can’t get there by road).  To get to Hyder, we left Dease Lake at a reasonable time and went south on the Cassiar Highway about 200 miles to Meziadin Lake Junction.

One guidebook says this of the remaining 40 miles into Stewart, BC/Hyder, AK, “…is one of the most scenic in British Columbia.”  WOW, it sure beat any other scenery we’ve seen this year – it is right up there with Montana and the BC/Alberta border for some of the greatest scenery in North America.  Sounds like we are “gushing”, right?  Here are some examples showing Bear Glacier (about halfway to town)

All that “nice road” stuff changes at the border.  Stewart BC is large enough to have paved streets, but neighboring Hyder has potholes comparable to “Top of the World”. 

We are staying at Camp Run-a-Muck.  We couldn’t pass up a place with such a name.  A couple of miles outside of town the US Forest Service set up a day-use area to keep tourists on an elevated boardwalk and watch bears catch their own salmon dinners in Fish Creek below.  I guess the fish are tastier and the boardwalk is too high for the bears to bother with us.

We spent about an hour waiting for the bears, but they must have been on a different schedule.  We did see a lot of salmon, however, in 3 to 6 inches of clear water.