Hazelton is a small town with a sizeable population of The First Nation’s People. This is what the natives of Canada have decided they wanted to be called. These around here consist of several clans of the Gitsan people.
Old Town Hazelton is very near the park and possesses a certain charm. It sits directly on the Skeena River. Only a handful of businesses are there.
I enjoyed this Law Office sign. The more you look at it, the more amusing it is.
First off, try to pronounce the name. I certainly can’t.
Then we have all heard “shark” jokes about attorneys, and there is a picture of a fish. Hmmm!
Now, note the row of faces at the bottom. Are these satisfied customers or not? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Don and I, as Tail Gunners for the tour, have several responsibilities. One of the first was to check people in when they arrived. We gave them their yellow jackets, radios for communication and settled up with them their final bill.
Don, of course, had it all extremely well organized, checklist and all, as he went over all the details of the radio and some helpful tidbits of what to expect when all 20 rigs arrive at an RV Park at the same time and we are directing the parking situation.
It also gave us our first chance to meet the couples one-on-one.
I met all the dogs as I am responsible for walking them when there are lengthy off-site tours.
I am very fortunate. There are only nine dogs on this trip. One recent Tour had 26. RV’ers do love their dogs and tend to travel with a lot of them.
The Tour Group consists of people who are from all over the USA and we think we have a good group.
Our Wagon Master is Spike. You will hear a lot about him. He is a super individual, an Alaskan in his own right who has been leading three tours each summer to Alaska for 16 years. He knows what he is doing.
Today was the first official day of the Tour. Everyone car-pooled to the near-by village of Kispiox. It has a lot of historic totem poles. This is one of the only areas that has them.
Spike spent time not only showing the people the totems but telling them stories and legends associated with them.
These totems area actually standing straight, it’s my camera that makes them look like they are leaning.
The totems are all hand carved out of red cedar. It takes about a year to carve each of them.
This is a Raven Clan’s totem. All the characters in the carvings have special meaning to the people.
This eagle (who has lost his beak) sits on top of the Eagle Clan’s totem.
The figure on the totem on the left is a wolf and is the totem of the Wolf Clan.
Spike knows many of the interesting legends of the totems and has been given permission from the First Nation People to tell the stories. One must have permission in order to repeat them.
This character is holding, not a canoe, but a food bowl and is sticking his tongue out, a sign of power.
If size of the tongue counts, he has a lot more power than I do.
These next four pictures are close-ups of a totem from top to bottom.
This is the totem of the Weeping Woman.
This is several of the totems in Totem Park.
The totems would normally be by the owner’s homes. It was decided by the local people, for the sake of tourism, to move these together to this location. However, they are all authentic historical totems.
I don’t know what this guy represents, but he has a nice background with the snow-capped Hazelton Mountains and fireweed in full bloom behind him.
After lunch, Spike took everyone on a short walk from the RV park to where the Skeena River and the Bulkley River converge.
Not only is it a beautiful setting, but it is great salmon fishing where these two rivers meet. The fish come up both rivers at the same time.
We also saw several Bald Eagles flying up and down the river. They like salmon, too.
From there it was a short walk over to the K’San Historical Village and Museum.
Here there are ceremonial houses of each of the local clans. I was not allowed to take pictures inside of any of these.
We had a First Nation’s guide showing us costumes and artifacts from, as they say, “A time before this.”
Tomorrow, all of these rigs and several more will head off for Alaska. There are 18 customer RV’s, two staff RV’s (ours and Spike’s) and two vans with trailers (for parts, tires, etc). We will arrive in Hyder, Alaska early afternoon.
Bears are out everywhere, so we should see several on the way.
One of our guys went up the bathroom here in the park at 5am this morning and was greeted by a black bear in front of the men’s room. He sort of forgot why he had gone there in the first place and made a hasty retreat back to the safety of his rig.
Fortunately, the bear was as afraid of him as he was of the bear, so all ended well.
The next blog posting will be from Hyder, Alaska and things will get much more interesting. Keep your eye out for what Don is going to be up to. As I have said to some, “You will see Don as you have never seen him before.” You are going to enjoy this.
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