Day 28 – Haines, Alaska

This tiny little fishing town is nestled against the base of the spectacular Takinshaw Mountains of the Chilkat Mountain Range, along the shore of the Lynn Canal. Although this town has a Main Street with a lot of quaint touristy shops and stores, it is still primarily a fishing village. The marina has a variety of recreational boats and fishing boats. You can see gill netters preparing their nets or crabbers loading up their pots.

A drive through town for the newcomer can be an experience though. Other than the streets that parallel the shoreline, the intersecting streets are very steep and often at strange angles to the main roads. Again, this town is built at the base of mountains, so almost everything is up.
here is an RV park right next to the boat basin. We didn’t stay there this time, but we may if we return. Our first night we stayed at the Chilkat State Park – BAD road into it. That is a whole other blog in itself. 

The second night we stayed at a boondock on the shore of the bay leading to the Chilcoot Lake State Park.  It was a great spot with sunshine on our backs, a view of the water, and an eagle perched on a nearby piling.


We were using our binoculars to look at the mountains across the bay when we noticed a killer whale swimming near the far shore. As we kept watching, we realized that there were actually two killer whales. One was larger than the other, so we figured that it was a mother and her calf. Pretty cool evening show!

The following morning we went to check out the Chilcoot Lake State Park. The lake itself is pretty stunning set at the bottom of the tall mountains. Then the Chilcoot River empties out of the lake and a short distance away flows into the bay. This is a favorite spot for fisherman – both human and bear. While we were there the Red Salmon (Sockeye) were just beginning to run.

A quick trip on the Alaskan State Ferry carried us to Skagway and onto the next leg of our journey.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1 – Searching for Some Sunshine

Image
We headed south from Olympia, driving through gloomy rain showers until we were well east of Portland, Oregon. Our destination? The Total Eclipse of the sun in Texas, which will occur on April 8th. That will give us about 9 days to travel the 3,000+ miles. I always forget the interesting geology that is exposed in the Columbia River gorge. The varying shapes of the basalt columns kept my interest for miles on end. Especially this time of year, spring, there were many waterfalls spraying the cliffs, and Multnomah Falls was roaring! Our first night was spent at a Harvest Host location in Echo, Oregon. The host was Echo Ridge Cellars. They have a nice flat gravel lot for Harvest Host guests.   The wines sold are pressed from their vineyard which is about 3 miles away. The building itself is my favorite part. They have restored and updated an old grain elevator. The inside of the elevator was left exposed so visitors can see the construction. It is very solid 2x6 boards stacked flat, rat
Read more

Day 9 – Side Trip to the Border

Image
With an extra day before our reservation at Lake Brownwood State Park for the eclipse, we debated where to go. Pat suggested a side trip down to Del Rio and/or Eagle Pass at the US-Mexican border which had been in the news of late. After looking over our maps, we decided to just go take a look at it. (Our apologies, this blog is longer than our normal ones, but it was a very interesting excursion) We drove down Hwy 277 through relatively flat terrain. There was scrub brush and cactus for miles and miles. When news reporters talk about illegal immigrants disappearing into the brush, we could easily see how that could be. Someone could be just feet away from the edge of the road and not be seen. The two-lane road was a good road with regular passing lanes. The further south we went the sparser the traffic became. It was kind of eerie and we wondered at times if we should be heading down there.   “Was this really a good idea?” However, curiosity kept us going. About thirty miles fro
Read more

Day 7 – A Window, the Wind, and Warriors

Image
The sun was out all day today as we traversed Arizona. There were so many choices of roadways, where would the wind blow us? We headed out from Page onto the scenic Hwy 98 with Navajo Sandstone cliffs to the north and periodically solitary sculpted rocks towered above the sagebrush flatlands on either side of the highway. Our next choice was to cross the Navajo and Hopi Reservations on Hwy 264. This road travelled up over around and down several mesas with only scattered villages. As we drove, we noted the highway was designated the Code Talker Highway for the Navajo Marines who helped the Allied forces during WWII.  Camp was in the town of Window Rock, which was designated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the center of the Navajo Nation. We made camp for the night at the Navajo Museum. Later in the evening, a short drive from camp brought us to the park at the base of Window Rock which is a huge wind eroded sandstone sculpture that allows you to glimpse the sky beyond.  What we
Read more