31 May – Bears, Bears, and more Bears.

We woke up to a cold, smooth Simmons Lake this morning. The furnace kicked on several times last night.  Jodie made us a cup of coffee and some pancakes and bacon.

 

I cleaned up the camp site and then we hit the road.  This camp site is off of the old original Cassair Highway, about 200 ft from the upgraded Highway, so its difficult to find. I seen it from the rest stop and knew from other camps on our route that we might be able to get to it if we could get on the old section of highway.

 

Needless to say, we were successful, but in a couple years it will no longer exist, it will be completely overgrown with trees and vegetation.

We no sooner got on the road then we seen our first bear for the day,  I think he got a whiff of the pancakes and bacon and was going to find out if there was any for him.

Simmons Lake feeds into a larger Dease Lake.  This lake runs miles along the valley. There is a lot of water flow, but the lake still has about 50% ice cover, That is the reason for the morning fog over some sections of the lake (the sections with ice)

Just before we turned off for the side trip to Stewart, We caught a Red Fox on the side of the road,  We slowed and crept up on him, he was within 10 ft of the truck, just gave us a casual glance and kept on looking for food.

The side trip to Stewart was absolutely fantastic (Route 37A), We seen bears, bears, and more bears, We also got to see two active glaciers.

In all, we seen 14 bears today, Most of them on the road to Stewart. This road runs down the valley of two large mountains, I think the bears are somewhat used to vehicles and don’t spook as easily as the bears we’ve seen on other roads.

A couple of the bears were as close as 5 ft from the Toyhouse, as we slowly drove up beside them. They just looked up at us and said “Hey” then continued chowing down on the dandelions.  Jodie was talking to a lady at the Ice Cream store, She said the bears were like that, just don’t feed them or spook them.  She also warned us about the Moose, they are somewhat reckless They’ll walk along side you on the road, they all the sudden, turn and walk right in front of you (We had already experienced this with several moose we’ve seen on the road.)

Also on the little side trip to Stewart was the viewing of two glaciers.

Summit Glacier is named because its, well, on the summit of the mountain. The photo doesn’t do justice, but you can see the glacier sits on the top of the mountain and when it flows, it actually falls off the edge of the mountain.  A lot of the glacier then sits at the bottom in the valley where it rebuilds itself a little before flowing into the river.

The other glacier is “Bear” glacier, Its plain to see it flowing very steep down the valley and into the river.

Moving down the road, we found a very nice and clean RV park just outside of Smithers, named “Glacier View”.  I commend the owners of this place, Its clean, neat, and no junk around the parking lots (more on this later) It exactly the way the picture says it is.

If your traveling through this area and need to stop for the night, or a couple days, check o0ut their web site:

www.glacierviewrvpark.com

ALSO –  If your not in a RV, They have Cabins – how cool is that.

odometer    >>  7,490

John & Jodie

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