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| Haines |
Of all of the coastal towns we have visited, Haines has the most “home town” atmosphere. It’s a place where you go to the grocery store and you run into at least two or three people you know. The towns folk are very independent yet friendly. They only have one cruise ship come in once a week , on Wednesday, and they do cater to the “boat people” to a certain extent. The popular bakery closes on Wednesdays, which is their way of showing their independence. They are also closed on Sunday. There are numerous other shops and galleries that also close on Sunday. Fishing is their main economy with tourism a close second. The VC closes at noon on the weekends. A popular Haines author has written a book titled If I lived Here, I’d know Your Name. This about sums up Haines.
We had wonderful weather while in Haines, the best weather of the whole trip with six consecutive days of sunshine and no rain. Saturday was almost too hot.
There are two public camp grounds and parks near Haines: the Chilkat State Park, and the Chilkoot Lake State Recreation Site. It gets a little confusing and you have to listen carefully because there is Chilkat river mountains, and inlet and Chilkoot river, mountain, and inlet. Haines was originally named Chilkoot, or was it Chilkat, but the town was renamed after Mrs. Haines, one of the first missionaries in the area.
On Wednesday we drove out to the two parks each is about 10 miles out of town, but in opposite directions. Chilkat State Park has great vistas of the Rainbow Glacier and Davidson Glacier and calm waters of the bay. The campsite were really small and not level at all so it was a good thing we didn’t plan on staying there. The campground was pretty empty.
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Chilkoot Lake SRS is the more popular campground and it was pretty full. The main attraction was Speedy and her two cubs. Speedy is a six year old grizzly. She has been living at the campground for several years and has a monitoring collar which was suppose fall off in June but it hasn’t yet. The ranger told us they don’t want to tranquilize her because of the cubs and will wait a couple of more months to take the collar off.
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| Mom has caught a fish |
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| She's looking for more salmon |
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| She is sharing it with the cubs |
It was quite a site watching her catch the fish and watching the cubs play in the water.
Haines, like all tourist towns in Alaska that we have visited, prints a walking tour brochure . Usually we look at the brochures and pick what we want to explore. On Thursday we decided to complete the whole walking tour of Haines and Ft. Seward.
Ft. Seward
The walking tour leads past a unique museum, something I usually pass up as a “tourist trap”. I got trapped and actually PAID (it was only $3.00) to go in the Hammer Museum. Thousands of hammers were neatly labeled and displayed. In addition to the ones on display there were 6,000 more to be categorized and displayed someday. It may have been a tourist trap but it was a fun one and the $3.00 wasn’t that bad a price.
These were my favorite. Since I'm only 5'2", long handles would be great for projects around the house (when I had one.)
We also did the walking tour of Dalton City which is where the movie White Fang was filmed.
The town has several gift shoppes and a brewery.
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| Fort Seward |
The weather continued to be perfect. Although, the weather man predicted 20% chance of rain, we ignored the reports and headed back to Chilkat State Park on Friday to hike part of the trail out to Seduction Point. The trail meanders through the rain forest and pops out a several beautiful coves. The water was a beautiful turquoise blue and it was smooth a glass. It was almost like being in the tropics. The trail is seven miles one way and you have to start out at low tide and get back before high tide. We hike about four miles out to David’s Cove and ate our lunch and basked in the sun. Liz didn’t go with us, she had booked a wildlife/birding tour.
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| Davidson Glacier |
We bid farewell to Bill on Saturday morning. He is heading back to Minnesota via the Cassier Highway (BC 37 ) There have been major forest fires in that area and a hundred mile section from the Yukon border to Dease Lake has been closed for nearly a week. They are letting cars through during limited hours but you have to follow a pilot car. We hope Bill gets through. The only other route is to back track to the Alaska Highway. Nancy, Liz, and I will probably head that direction on Monday, but it will take us several days to get to the area that is closed.
Sunday arrived way too fast. Liz headed out on the Ferry to Juneau for a day trip. The weather was warm and sunny...again! Nancy and I hiked up to the summit of Riley Mountain, 2.8 mile one way with 1700 ft elevation gain ..The trail was typical of what we have seen...rain forest dispersed with meadows and lots of tree roots to maneuver around. Our efforts were rewarded with views of the Chilkat and Chilkoot Inlets, the Lynn Canal as well as views of the town of Haines and the many glaciers that look down on the inlets. The photos don’t really show the beauty. The mountains were pretty hazy, perhaps from the fires near the Cassier Highway in BC.
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| Bill, Nancy, and Sadie along the trail to Seduction Point |
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| The inlets near Haines |
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| The village of Haines |
Haines celebrated its 100 years of incorporation on Sunday with an old fashioned street fest. All the town residence gathered together on main street for a group photo followed by a Bar B Que with street music. Nancy and I wandered down around 3:00 and most of the folks had left. Guess they showed up for the picture and the free hamburger and decided not to stick around for the music.
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| One of the fish wheels along the Chilkat |
We’ll leave in the morning for Whitehorse and start working our way towards the Cassier-Stewart Highway.
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