We’re back in Stewart, BC and this time it isn’t rainy!

We even booked a spot back at the same RV park where we knew they had showers and laundry.

We (I) was so cranky this morning, after a night with the mosquitos. We were slow getting up this morning, but at the same time, I didn’t want to spend one more unnecessary moment at that place feeding the mosquitos. LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!

The sky was sunny as we drove into Stewart. We went downtown first, and found a little Saturday market.

I stopped in at the Stewart Visitor’s Centre to find out if there really are bears at the Fish Creek now, over in Hyder, Alaska. And they are! The salmon are running! They told us the best time was 6-9, both am and pm.

Perfect, that meant we had the afternoon to do a load of laundry and get some showers.

Then we went over to Hyder around 5pm.

There were many other people there, and a few park rangers and maybe a few more retired volunteers? They all had walkie talkies and a can of bear spray on their hips.

We were excited to see 5 salmon in the river as we walked in along the board walk!

Soon we realized our excitement was ridiculous, because when we walked further up, there were hundreds and hundreds of salmon in the river!

The river was full of pink salmon that weren’t too active, just kinda hanging out. And on the far side of the river were chum salmon, that were actively spanning and fighting and rotting.

It wasn’t long before the walkie talkie chatter started. A brown bear (grizzly) was just spotted walking across the road towards the creek. YAY! ACTION!!

We waited quietly, all 50? of us, waiting for action.

But it never came. We waited for 4 hours and no bears arrived tonight. We saw plenty of salmon spanning action. And beavers. And seagulls. And a bald eagle. And a family of mergansers.

But the sun had long ducked behind the mountains and there were no bears, so we called it off at 9pm.

Bummer eh? We gave it a shot, but didn’t see any bears coming to snack on the salmon.

Final bear tally at Fish Creek when we left:

Today (Saturday) was a slow day for bears there. Although maybe we were all just too noisy (like when that numbskull woman set that Find my Phone alarm sound off from her watch. Moron.) (Yeah that was me.)

While I’m off loading photos from my real camera, here are the two grizzlies we saw after leaving Stewart, weeks ago.

Good night!