Bears in AK

Hi Everyone,

Just to update you all. We have done a lot of driving since our last post. I don't think even I realized how far it is from Southern Canada to Alaska. After we left Banff we drove all day until we got to Hyder, Alaska (about as far south in AK as you can get). ALASKA! I was pretty pumped. I haven't been back since we left when I was one. Then, we pulled into the campsite. First of all it was pouring rain. Now I don't get bothered by cold very easily, but rain and 50 degrees in August even dampened my spirit. Then there's the town itself. If you are trying to find the town of Hyder on a map good luck - Stewart is probably the biggest town in the area if you'd like to see where we are. The town consists of 100 people, a gas station, nine shops, a post office, a restaurant and two bars. To make matters worse because Hyder is part of Alaska (which has its own time zone) but might as well be in Canada, half the town goes by Canadian time and the other half goes by Alaska time! The funniest part about the smallness of the town is that there is no law. That's right, no law. No police, no rules, no nothing. So the wild people in town go 40 down the 20 mph road!

Back to us. The day after we got there my dad woke me up early to go for our two and a half hour walk. I have..I mean get to run/walk the Equinox marathon with my dad in a few weeks. So we start off around 7am and about five minutes in I ask if he brought his iPhone to take pictures. He didn't. So after thinking about it for a minute we turned around to get it, just in case we run into any bears destined to be in Wildlife Weekly or something like that. Now about four miles from the campsite there is a national forest with a little walkway that goes out over this little creek where bears like to come and fish. Now this isn't some sort of zoo these are actual wild bears catching these huge salmon spawning in the stream. So we get there after about an hour and go by a pass to go on the walkway. We go up on the walkway and the guide there tells us, it's a good thing you didn't come ten minutes earlier we would have run into a bunch of bears romping around on the road. "Coincidence, I think not!" (Incredibles anyone?) more like Providence! After not seeing any bears and receiving many warnings about not having bear spray (?) we headed back.

That afternoon we decided to head back to the park with the rest of the family. This time there was a bear! A little female grizzly, according to the guide, who was in the mood for seafood.The funniest part of the day was when Kik turns to me after watching the bear chow down and asks 'do fish go to heaven?' I was surprised our laughter didn't scare the bear away. Eventually we did leave, stopping along the walkway to see the man made Blue Lagoon. These people are so good with names. We left the next morning (our first multiple day stay) and got, once again, into our nine hours of driving a day routine. To make matters worse, I'm starting Pre-Calc.

Well that's it for now, I'm off to scavenge in our depressingly empty pantry,

Z