Blue skies and sun to Stewart, BC

We were greeted to blue skies and sunshine when leaving Smithers this morning. Absolutely beautiful riding weather though heated gear was still called for. We continued on Highway 16 as the road wound it’s way along a river to Kitwanga where we took highway 37, also know as the Cassiar Highway, north.

Light traffic made for easy travel. While constantly scanning the side of the road for wildlife you try not to linger too long looking at the awesome scenery. The first reminder that this a more remote region of British Columbia was when we came to a construction zone. Signage was standard, a new bridge project, but then we came upon the old bridge – a wood planked single lane bridge…on a highway! Interesting. Haven’t seen or ridden that before :-).

We make a quick gas stop in Meziadin Junction before we continued on to 37A to Stewart, BC. It’s a short 60km ride but what a ride! Every turn revealed yet another stunning view making it really hard to stay focused on the road.  I tried to capture it but as they say, photos just cannot do it justice.

The first potential campground was just outside Stewart. The tent sites I could identify were questionable so we decided to venture further into town to look for something else. We cross into Hyder, AK to check out another campground and so we can say we made it to Alaska ;-). The campsites were nestled among tall pine trees so they were dark with little sunshine so not very appealing. Also, the hostess made the mistake of mentioning to Diane that there was a recent black bear sighting which was enough to convince her this was not the place to stay. There was a hotel option back in Stewart but we were both looking forward to camping given the nice weather. We went back to the first place, the Bear River RV Park where the camp host directed us to a nice spot.

We forgot to mention, on our way to Smithers we sighted our first bear hanging out in a sloped clearing along the road. No picture because of the rain.

Todays route.