August 15th

“And on the seventh day God rested“…. and so did we! There was a little Baptist church across the street from us who were having services this morning at 11 am, so we thought we’d go. Tim, it was the quintessential LL Bean kinda’ church that we’ve talked about! It was a little log cabin about ¾ the size of our house with little wooden pews lining both sides of a middle aisle. The windows framed a perfect forest setting and there were only about 20 people including us! Unfortunately the sermon was a little monotone and the music a bit stale…. but it was fun to have coffee, home made chili and apple pie after the service in the basement and meet some of the local people. Why is that we are always the last ones to leave church even when we don’t attend there!! After the service we walked around “downtown”. Oh my, if you can call it that. There were as many shops closed for business as there were open, one general store and a bar. A Tee-shirt that we saw said it best, “Hyder, the friendliest little ghost town in America”. Everywhere we went though, people were very nice and willing to share their stories with you. It was fun to hear how these people ended up in Hyder. Most of them came through on vacation and never left. They returned home only to sell what they had and move here. Though it is beautiful, the town and houses are not well kept and it’s almost a bit depressing. So I am ready to move on tomorrow.

We did go to the bear boardwalk once again tonight. We had to park way down the street, a short walk to get onto the safety of the boardwalk. Gary had already locked his door and gotten out of the car with camera, coat, binoculars, etc. when I noticed a medium sized black bear walk out of the woods behind him.
I quickly, but quietly, said, “Gary, black bear behind you!!” Thankfully the bear continued across the street and headed for the stream rather than up the road towards us. As Gary went to film that bear, I got out of the car and wanted to get to the boardwalk but as I turned to walk up the road, a female grizzly and her cub (probably the ones we filmed last night) came out of the woods right in front of me. I was relieved when she also headed straight for the stream. I was never so glad to be on the boardwalk. As we approached the end of the walkway there was a big male grizzly feeding up stream. He put on quite a show as he gradually made his way down towards us. He waded into the pools and fished, though he was much quicker than the female last night at catching his dinner. One time he caught the fish right in front of where we were standing and began eating it in the bushes below us. For some reason my camera is not focusing so I’m having trouble getting really good shots… unfortunately!! To add to the delight of the evening a Bald eagle showed up at dusk to forage his dinner on river carcasses and then a Golden eagle showed up right afterward. We felt like we were in a zoo at feeding time.