Hyder

As I continue to think about moving back to the Lower-48 at the end of this summer, I was just reminded that if I do drive back, I'll be able to stop in Stewart, British Columbia, and its neighbor town of Hyder, Alaska. Hyder is the very small town of about eighty people where I drove up into the mountains in 2007, and followed a family of black bears, as shown in these two videos.

I took this video when I first stumbled onto the black bear family eating, er, something:

Here are a few pictures I took while on the mountain road around Hyder, Alaska. I took these pictures for some third-grade students in Kentucky after they sent me this stuffed animal they named "Brownie".

Brownie actually made the trip more fun. A lot of times I would think "Oh, I don't feel like stopping, I just want to keep driving", and then I would think about Brownie and the kids, so I'd pull over and take a few pictures. This always ended up being a good thing.

So, for the kids out there, here's Brownie with the scary mountain road behind him:

I think it's pretty darned funny, the first time I came to Stewart, British Columbia, and Hyder, Alaska, I was pretty badly freaked out, lost, and running out of gas. I was cruising down a mountain with my car in neutral, essentially praying there was going to be a town and a gas station at the bottom of the mountain. For all I knew I was about to be starring in the remake of Deliverance.

Here are two short videos from today's trip in Hyder, Alaska. This first one shows some of the snow from the road, and gives an idea of the steep cliff off the side of the road. Trust me, you want to stay on the road.

Steep cliff off the side of the road in Hyder

I've seen a lot of bears this year, but unfortunately earlier in the year I didn't know how to use the video controls on my camera. These days I do know how to use the video controls, and on my way back into the town of Hyder (as opposed to the more rural area up in the mountains) I came across a momma bear and three cubs. Here are two video segments as I followed momma and the cubs for a little while.

First, here's where I first saw them, as they were eating something off of a rock on the side of the road: