We’ve both had a long summer of long work days, lots of work travel, and I’ve sacrificed a couple of long weekends for work, so Jeff and I decided to create a 4-day long weekend and trek to the BC pseudo-interior to stay at a rustic chalet in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, about an hour east of Bella Coola.
Inside the Beechcraft. 
It’s bigger than I expected!
After some unpredictability over where we would actually land (due to weather), our pilot managed to drop our little Beechcraft through a hole in the cloud-cover and we made it safely to the Bella Coola airport. We met Jeff, our host (“Host Jeff” from now on, for clarity) and he informed us of our good fortune, because if we’d landed in Anahim Lake, the airline would have transported us in a rickety, old, bare-bones school bus. He shared this story un-ironically as we climbed into his 1987 Land Cruiser, complete with push-button am-fm radio, ash trays in the doors, and the strong smell of wet dog.
Host Jeff’s luxury truck chugged down the highway along a valley that naturally separates the Coast Mountain range to the south from the Kitimat range to the north. We made frequent stops to pick up garbage that someone had tossed out their window as they ate their way through a fast food meal. Host Jeff, we were about to learn, has some very strong feelings about the food-conditioning of the local bear population.
Just before we reached Host Jeff’s home, the Great Bear Chalet, Husband Jeff spotted a bear walking through woods to our right. Host Jeff u-turned his truck and we drove back down the road a bit and then got out of the truck to watch. The bear was a young “teenage” grizzly, maybe 4 years, old walking parallel to the highway in search of food. We were on the other side of the road, maybe 30 meters away – but we stood extremely quietly and in a tight group and our little bear paid us zero attention. This is in strict opposition to the bear safety practices we learned in Jasper, which amounted to “stay in your car at all times”, but Host Jeff seemed to have some decent bear mojo.
On arriving at the lodge, we met Bindi, the source of the wet-dog smell in the truck and also, as it turned out, in the lodge itself. Fortunately, wet-dog is a smell you become “nose blind” to very quickly so it was only eye-watering for maybe the first 30 minutes. Bindi is an older dog who looks to be a mix of maybe some malamute and german shephard. She accompanies Host Jeff on hikes in the woods, acting as a second pair of bear-spotting eyes, but lately she’s had some knee inflammation issues and Host Jeff is quite upset that her hiking days are almost over.
After eating a modest but lovely lunch of locally smoked salmon (delicious!), blueberries, brie and some surprisingly edible crackers disguised as corrugated cardboard, we headed out to do a couple of nearby hikes. Not ready to make the transition to solo guide, Host Jeff brought Bindi with us. We hiked about 8 km in total, part of which was along the same trail our little bear had used, but we didn’t see anymore bears. I’m not upset about not seeing bears while walking through their territory, TBH! We did see some eagles and some beautiful scenery.
Back at the lodge, we watched a group of Rufus Hummingbirds swarm a feeder. They seem to do this all day long, dawn to dusk, without a break. We also found out that Host Jeff’s house doubles as a bat house and saw a little black bat crawl out from under the roof and fly away. Apparently many, many bats live under the roof and inside the siding. Host Jeff tried to get us to call him Batman but it didn’t take.
Bindi takes a breather 
Hummingbird swarm. All day, every day. 
This clearly marked path is why we needed a guide.