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We were up early, quick breakfast to go at the local bakery/cafe, petrol top up and we bid a fond farewell to Stewart. The same road out to the junction led us once more past glaciers and icy glacier fed rivers.
We'd been told the day before by the ranger at the bar boardwalk that most of the bears had moved on to Hana Creek. We came to Hana Creek and there were a few other cars parked up and people on the bridge - a good sign something was up :-)
We took our place on the bridge and for more than an hour we watched grizzlies! First there was one who'd just caught a fish before we arrived, he devoured it with audible crunching and went back for another. When that was also consumed he wandered off, maybe for a lie down lol
We didn't wait more than a few minutes for the next show. From just in front of our car a pair of grizzlies that looked to be of a similar age, maybe two, popped out onto the road, crossed and ran down through the grass to the river on the other side of the road. They're weren't overly adept at catching fish, one instantly settling for a freshly dead one while the other tried in vain to catch a live one. They both went under the bridge to the other side to try their luck, the second one finding a dead one which he then crunched his way through. He made a few other half hearted attempts to catch live fish but was rubbish finally taking to scavenging around at the side of the river for fresh-ish dead ones. The other left him to it going a little further up river, splashing about a bit before eventually getting an alive, if only just, fish to munch on.
With camera cards and iPad storage bulging we moved on.
We stopped at a rest area by a lovely stream for lunch and as we were leaving we began talking to a pot hole repair chicky who'd just pulled in. She said shed just seen a moose and two calves just a k or so back up the road. We bolted back, did a bit of bush bashing driving but couldn't find them :-(. Ah well if nothing else it gives us hope that there are some around despite the locals all saying they're still up high.
We spotted an eagle high in a tree and stopped and tried to get some pics. Pete walked a wee way along to get a different angle and saw a beaver in a pond below the road. It ducked under water and didn't come back up before he could focus and get anything if that but at least he saw one :-)
We knew we were coming out of the wilderness when we hit a wide road with frequent overtaking lanes, something we'd not seen for a few days. Cleared land started to replace the forests and cattle replaced the various wild animals we'd been seeing. A bridge was more likely to be over a railway line than a salmon filled river. Even Pete commented that it was like a different world after the isolation we'd become used to.
We saw a sign for farm fresh veggies so stopped in and got some potatoes, a lettuce and spinach. He picked the spinach and lettuce while talking to us, can't get fresher than that! He was a right chatterbox, wanting to know where we'd been and lots of suggestions on where we should go from here. We probably stopped for ove half an hour all for the huge purchase of $4 :-)
Once we hit the town of Smithers and saw the KFC etc we knew for sure our time in isolation was really over.
The forecast change in the weather has hit today with a top of 22C, far warmer than we've had recently. For all that it's still expected to go down to between 1 & 5C tonight.
We settled in for the night at a nice motel in Burns Lake which had pretty good wifi so we caught up in what we couldn't post last night.
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