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.



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