Jade City to Hyder

6-25-06
Jade City to Hyder, AK 323 miles
At 5:35 am we left Jade City and went down the road to a rest stop where we could run the generator and the water pump and not wake anyone up. After our showers and breakfast and taking pictures of our dirty rig, we were back on the road at 6:35. The weather was cool and overcast, but the sun was soon out partially making it a good day for traveling. There was one lake after another along the sides of the road. Some small and some many miles long. We finally saw a moose with horns. He cut across the road and up into the trees almost before we could react. He was very dark brown and had lost most of his winter hair so was beautiful. We bought gas in Iskut at 9:30 for $1.32/liter then again at the junction of 37 and 37A for $1.19. Most of the day we saw road constructin signs and watch for flaggers, but since it was Sunday no one was working except for one area where they were running a grader so it was one way traffic. We saw a black bear then about four miles saw two small black bears - think they were about year old cubs. On the road into Stewart/Hyder there are glaciers across the way that come almost to the highway. We are stopping there on our way out this morning. We drove through Stewart - stopped to wash the truck (only had enough loonies for the truck, will wash the trailer on the way out of town) then decided to drive on to Hyder which is actually in Alaska. There is customers from Alaska to Canada, but not from Canada to Hyder. Hyder has NO paved roads, but we liked it better than Stewart so stayed here. Drove up to fish creek (about 4 miles) to see if there were any bears getting fish from the creek. But the fish aren't here yet so no bears. Then many people have said to drive up to Salmon Glacier where you are looking down on it. I thought it was a bad gravel road, but the lady in the office said the Canadian Government had put millions into the road and it wasn't bad. Wellll, I was driving the it was gravel, about 1 1/2 car lanes wide, no shoulder, no guard rails and washboards and we kept going up. When we got to the bottom of the glacier (yes we were looking down to see the bottom of it) we had gone 16 miles and the road kept going up and up and around the corner. The top was supposed to be 20 miles total, but we found a place to turn around and I asked Harold to drive back down as I was going to have my eyes closed!!! Needless to say we got back down safely, but if I were recommending a road to someone I would be a little more honest about the conditions. Since I have been running on about 3 hours sleep per night, I went to bed at 8:30 and slept until 9 in the morning.