Hello Again
After our trip down to Skagway on August 2, we had planned to go down the Cassiar Highway to visit Stewart, British Columbia and Hyder, Alaska. Stewart and Hyder are both know for forestry and logging, and Donny wanted to see some western logging sites. Also, Hyder is the home of Fish Creek Wildlife Center where bears - both black and grizzly - can be easily seen feeding on salmon in July and August.
However, our plans were thwarted by a fire. The forest on both sides of the Cassiar Highway is burning. In fact, we have heard that there are dozens of fires in British Columbia. The one in the Cassiar area is apparently following the highway and doubling in size every day - yesterday we heard that it was over 10,000 acres, and the highway is closed and probably won't open any time soon. It's a good thing we stayed an extra day in Chicken; if we had left a day earlier, we might have been in that forest fire area right now!
Needless to say, we changed our plans and headed east instead. On Tuesday, we made it from Johnson's Crossing, Yukon to Liard River in British Columbia, where we camped in a turnout. All day, the air was full of smoke and a blue haze filled the sky.
Today, we continued our journey east. We are going to meet up with some internet acquaintances of Donny's later this week in Alberta, so we are heading in their direction. As we were approaching Fort Nelson, BC, we decided to take a "short" 110-mile-one-way side trip to Fort Liard, Northwest Terrirories, just so we could say we visited that province. The road was recently paved for more than half its length, but the second half was very dusty.
The best thing about the past two days is that we finally saw a whole bunch of animals! Yesterday we saw 2 moose and about 100 bison; today we saw 2 dozen stone mountain sheep, 5 caribou, 3 moose and 6 black bear - the bears were in Northwest Territories! Also gray jays, ptarmigan, white winged crossbills, several hawks, a young eagle that almost flew into our windshield while in pursuit of a rodent, and a bunch of ducks.
Tomorrow we are setting out for Dawson Creek. Hope the smoke clears.
Later!
Cheryl & Don
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