September 10, 2001 we arrived down in Hyder, Alaska

After three months of touring all of western side of Canada and all through Alaska we found ourselves coming down to Hyder, Alaska, home of the bears. Our SMART (Special Military Retired Travelers) Club with 20 military men and their wives had enjoyed the wonders of our great world they had protected until retirement. We were glad to see our TV had reception in this area so we could catch up on what all was going on in the world.

Hyder is a small village where bears roam the dirt street as well as people, when the bears aren't out there. We could go down to a small stream in the evening to watch the bears eating salmon they would just reach into the stream for their meal, step on the tail of fish and take a paw, run their nails down the side and fillet a fish in seconds.

My husband, Paul Allison was an early riser and would put on his headphones to listen to TV of mornings to keep from waking me up, which he did early September 11th. However this morning he came back to the bedroom saying the US had been attacked, then hurried out to knock on the other RVs to wake the rest of military men. The TV said all entrances back into the US were locked down and no one was allowed to enter.

Of course the men started communicating with different ones to get information as to what was going on and when we could get back into the states. We had 4 days travel yet to get to the gates, where we found long lines waiting to be inspected before entering the state of Washington. Our men talked to the military guards on gates and even though we were military they had to check our IDs and every place in our motor homes. They had some unusual tales to tell about things they found.

We truly were glad to be home in the good old USA.

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