Hovering over a Glacier

I look like I'm at the top of Mount Everest and should be on oxygen, but actually I am just 4,000 feet up and looking down on Salmon GlacierIt's cold, but cool isn't enough to describe being on top of a glacier


We drove the 20 miles up the dirt road with the promise of a look at a glacier you'd never see from a car anywhere else

We followed Salmon Glacier up to it's very top

We left the mirror in the pictures so you could see these were all taken from the front seat of our car, and we definately have our mouths open

You can look back into the mirror at all the other smaller glaciers around Salmon Glacier

The black stripes that make it look like a Saturn ring are the debris that the glacier chews up,

anything that get's in it's path,

is pulverized


Salmon Glacier is Canada's 5th largest glacier, but it is the world's largest glacier that you can drive up to

Even Gracie is impressed with the glacier, Rainier explains it all to her

Imagine the solitude that you have sitting on this bench and seeing something that not many will ever see, it is so eerie and quiet

Two minutes and then the mosquitoes find you, off to the right is a man selling videos and books of this glacier, out of his car

Come see it before it melts

This is called the toe of the glacier, where it ends

Notice the blue color of the ice



These ponds are actually ice in the soil that melts and forms the ponds

These were not taken with a telephoto lense, we were right there, feeling like we could reach out and touch,

unbelievable

This glacier feeds the river that the salmon spawn in and the bears eat, the silt is so dense that the salmon push themselves to clear the section with it and end up sometimes in the clear part of the river too soon to spawn, so they slow down and the bears get them



The pictures don't do it all justice, you really have to come and see this for yourself,

you owe it to yourself

Hyder seek for a week

This is where we spent alot of our week in Hyder, here and at the

bear bridge,

this is Diana's place,

THE BUS Diana cooks the food and her husband catches it, he say's if he wasn't out fishing we'd all be eating

hamburgers




It snowed over 40 feet last year, Diana is only open in the summer for the tourist season, don't think there are many people here for the winter but locals




It's just an old bus, sold to her by two kids who decided to go snow boarding instead

Here's Diana, most all the seafood she cooks, they caught it, she makes her batter, tarter sauce and Mermaid Chowder, with halibut and salmon, out of this world!

Cindy and I sat out in front everyday, that way we could keep an eye on Gracie, chewing on the windows and all, and got to talk to the locals and learned some juicy gossip, you could eat inside on picnic tables

They took the bus seats out and you sit on them in front, notice the baggies full of water, she claims that

flies don't like water so it keeps them away,

didn't see any flies so maybe it works

Cindy had a Johnnies, 2 halibut and 6 shrimp, I stuck with 4 halibuts, best I have ever had, we ate the same thing for a week

She also sells fish and smokes fish, so she is very busy, but just takes it all in stride, there is just her

You are looking at Hyder's street, potholes galore, Stewart, which is British Columbia is very well paved and clean, one of the locals told me they didn't want the road fixed, the potholes keep people from driving to fast, and if they fixed it they would bring in police next and they don't want that

I am half in Alaska and half in Canada,

when you go into to Alaska there is no big deal

but when you go out you have to go through Canadian Customs,

doesn't make a bit of sense, there is only one road in and out,

one of the locals said that Canada said they wanted to do it because the people in Hyder were getting rich selling tobacco and liquor to the Canadians, she just laughed and said,

do any of us look like we are

rich???

You couldn't go 20 mph or you'd break your neck on the roof of your car going over the potholes, Hyder is just the other side of the mountain from Ketchican

This is the border crossing, I guess in the winter there is no activity, so Canada wanted to close the border, but Hyder said, no way, 24 hours a day every day, they had promised them

I saw this heron off the side of the road, thought it was pretty

I saw the sign "We have Tom Yocky Dulcimers" and had no idea by the time I had walked out of there I would have one also, it is beautiful, has a moose on it, Moosehead is it's name, and Carolyn gave Cindy and I a lesson on how to play it, so watch out, I am doing a

Christmas Show

This is Carolyn, she said she came to Hyder 27 years ago on a vacation and never left, she is telling me about her husband who is a logger and can tell the sound of a tree before it falls, he goes into forests and marks trees for musical instument makers, he went down the road to see a spruce that fell in a storm and that is what these Dulcimers are made out of

She makes it sing

This is all there is to the Hyder boat ramp, Diana's husband docks his boat here

Can't camp on it you can drive right up to it

This are the remnants of buildings that were build on the estuary

Kind of reminds you of a cemetery doesn't it, and yes we have the cemetery pictures to go

This is the General Store, the front door, kind of direct