• This post, like the previous ones and probably future one’s as well, is thrown out to our readers and the ether after the adventure has ended. For information about journeying with us… sent us a note at twogalsgo@gmail.com.

Well, first we had to leave Skagway – go back to Alaska – (Rotary International Inusuk). Then through the TORMENTS.

Then to change out a flat tire for our friend BE and her sister.

Then a quick stop at the famous BC Jade place where there was a couple from Chile on their motorcycles.

Then cool wooden deck bridges and Inuksuk placed by a fishing spot.

And, hard to imagine, more bears and glaciers.

And finally Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK.

Smashed together with a single border crossing between (the BC side, the US apparently doesn’t care since Hyder is darn small). Stewart is a respectable lumber town with small businesses, restaurants, traveler trade places, and a port for floating logs out to big ships to haul off to elsewhere (this is an Alaskan term, I borrow it here).

• Gore alert. Stop reading HERE and do something else if you don’t want to look at how the natural world operates. Gore ahead.

What were we doing in this odd little valley? BEARS. Yup. Other than the rebelliousness of it’s citizens, Hyder boasts a National Park center that happens to perch over a creek into which spawning salmon pour each year. Of course spawning salmon, for the most part, are finished with their lives and die right there in the creek which attracts those most cumbersome looking of creatures – bears. grizzly and black bears like morning fishing. Real early morning!

And after noshing away, this big grizzly (reported by the rangers to be the largest they’d seen in a couple of years) hopped up, munched some berries that also bordered the raised walkway and moseyed off. That was the first morning when Barb got up early and I did not. So 8′ away she watched a grizzly tear into a salmon. Humph. The early bird does seem to get the worm.

Not much was happening in the evening. Just lots of salmon dying and struggling to get upstream. Hope you can see the amount of salmon. It’s in the hundreds of thousands each season.

The fox hangs out at the border crossing. The logs are Stewart type industry. The place is just pretty though.

I want you to get cozy with bears here…

That orange stuff around the torn up salmon? Eggs. Not every egg makes a fry.

The bears put on a lot of weight this time of year. They eat a lot and salmon are not their only food. What an amazing thing to be close to! I have to say it: it was a beary-good-time.

Sure was pretty there. Quite an experience for those who got up early and stayed up late. The rangers talk about having to BAM! do noisy scares of grizzly who want to climb up onto the boardwalk. They talk about years of salmon decline and bear decline. So we who visit now, snapping photos and internally reveling in the experience of being here in this moment may be some of the hundreds who have it, while in the future many may not.