Enjoying Haines

We love Haines!  It is a small picturesque town of only 2500, but it has a certain charm.  Our campground is within walking distance of "downtown" and the harbor, and there are beautiful towering snow covered mountains surrounding the area.  The Chilkat river comes down one side of the town and the Chilkoot Lake and its outflow come down the other side.  After a long walk around town, we went to Chilkoot Lake to put the canoe in the water.

Beautiful Chilkoot Lake

Another view

Still waters, the color is because the lake is fed by a glacier

The intrepid paddler

Back to the dock

We paddled around for a couple hours watching the eagles.  By the way they are everywhere up here.  Adults and youths abound, almost like pigeons:-)  

This is the view from the Chilkoot river that empties into the bay

We then had a laid back lunch on a picnic table at Big Al's Salmon Shack, just a little trailer along one street.  Jan had a delicious halibut sandwich and I had halibut fish and chips.  Yeah we are working on depleting the halibut population.  Then we drove up the Chilkat River and found several fish wheels.

The Chilkat River, it is a braided river full of glacial silt,
and full of fish

A fish wheel in operation

Another view

A fish wheel is an ingenious invention.  It all by itself catches migrating salmon and puts them in a barrel.  The flow of the water causes the fish wheel to turn, the salmon swim in, are picked up by the rising netted scoop, the built-in vee slides the fish either right or left into a funnel like tube right into a barrel!  Only true Alaska residents are allowed to use these devices for their subsistence fishing.  We hit the weather just perfect, warm, sunny, and wonderful!

One of many bush planes climbing out over the Chilkat River

Ferry rides are over, here we are in Haines!

I left you at our delicious breakfast at the Sandpiper in Juneau.   After eating we went back to the ferry dock picked up the motorhomes and got into our campground at the Mendenhall Lake in the Tongass National Forest.  It was very nice, huge sites, quiet, deep in the trees.  We were warned about bear in the area when we checked in and sure enough Jan while out taking a walk encountered a black bear.  She made a judicious retreat, reported it to the camp host later the next day, and it turned out they had trapped 2 bears the night before.  The bears unfortunately were getting too familiar with people and had to be put down.

We needed a little bite after just breakfast so we found some mini crab cakes at Tracy's King Crab Shack and went to a pretty overlook in the rain and had our afternoon snack.

Yum, yum!

A pretty rainy view

Our campsite in the woods

The next day we decided on a hike on the East Glacier Loop.  It was a beautiful narrow path through the woods, a little uphill for the first half.  It is virtually a rain forest in Juneau with about 62" of rain each year.  The forest is dead quiet as everything is soft, damp, and covered with moss, even the trees!

We went about 3 1/2 miles and found an overlook that was superb.

Path to the overlook

Jan made it

And so did I

And of course since we did a little climbing we needed to come down.

A steep long set of stairs!

The Mendenhall Glacier is pretty impressive and only a few miles from Juneau proper.  Not many of us live with a glacier in our towns!

Mendenhall Glacier

We putzed around Juneau for the next day, had a good time, and some great halibut!  But then it was time to get to our final ferry to Haines.  We pulled out of the campground at 0515 to queue up before 0600 for our 0800 departure, and wouldn't you know we hit a very low tide almost perfectly.  Not good!  It means the ramp onto the boat was at a very steep angle.  Well when a Prevost tour bus went down first and Jan watched it scrape its way on, we got pretty nervous.  A Prevost bus is the same size as we are.  The ferry people assured us they would take care of us even using extra planks as necessary.  I was next, man what a steep incline!  They stopped me twice and readjusted the hydraulic ramp and got me on with no dragging, but then I had to maneuver back and forth, then all the way around the car deck all the way to the stern and then back and fill to point back out the bow where we had entered.  Karen was next and also had no problem, as they say, "these guys are good".

Lining up

Low tide

An eagle having breakfast on a beautiful morning

Fishing boat

Leaving the dock

Another glacier on the way

Pretty lighthouse

The scenery is incredible!

Getting off in Haines turned out to be no problem at all since the tide had come up quite a way all 22' of it!  That way we were essentially level coming off the ferry.

At the Haines dock waiting for another ferry to move off

This  post is a few days late getting posted as the internet is getting more and more challenging.  I have to admit our phone coverage is far better than we anticipated, and up here so far AT&T is beating Verizon.  Our phones are AT&T, but our mifi is Verizon and it is always interesting to see who has coverage and who doesn't.  Here in Haines, it's definitely AT&T.

2 1/2 days of water and into Juneau!

The first leg of our ferry ride is over.  We arrived in Juneau this morning at 0545, 30 minutes late as a sister ship was still at the dock.  Quite an experience.  At least for Jan and I, it was the longest we've ever spent continuously traveling somewhere.  I have a lot of pictures to share of our experience.  We got to the ferry dock in Bellingham early Friday for our 1800pm departure.  They wanted us there 3 hours prior, but with nervousness the word of the day we showed up about 1230, and still were not the first to arrive.  We got checked in and queued up for the statistical puzzle of loading.  With 7 destinations in total and vehicles getting off and on, all with different destinations, it has to be a huge challenge to figure where to put everyone!  And to make it just a bit more complicated, we found out there are 2 car decks, accessible by 2 elevators!  

The motorhomes in line

And the trucks in line

Our ship, the Columbia

Entrance to the car deck

Well we waited and waited and slowly they began to load, but by 1700pm we were still sitting in the parking lot!  They will never make a 1800 departure we thought.  Finally Jan and Tom with the trucks were loaded, then a little while later I got the nod, and Karen still sat.

Trucks in place

Here I come

Down the ramp

And onto the car deck

Tight squeeze!

Finally Karen got her turn.

About to enter the ramp

And in she goes!

Then as we all are pretty tired of sitting around, they button it up quite late, maybe 1845 or so, but announce that the ferry operates on Alaska time so it's only 1745, and off we go right on "time" at 1800!  All good and underway.

Beautiful view of Mt Baker

And it's not long before we see the first sea life. 

An orca

The weather is gorgeous, warm and sunny.  It is absolutely beautiful.  We are on the calm waters of the Inside Passage surrounded by green tree covered hills punctuated by sharp peaked mountains iced with snow.  And as we are reminded by the locals, this is rare wonderful summer weather.  We walk the decks, explore the ship, check out our staterooms, and of course, have some wine before our picnic dinner we brought with us.  As night falls, late I might add since it is the summer solstice, we wind down to our respective cabins.

The morning comes early as well, but the weather has changed overnight.  It is overcast and tendrils of fog hang all over.

We spend the day mostly watching the changing scenery and weather, in and out of rain showers now.  We see some humpback whales, but they are pretty elusive and seem to disappear once they are spotted.

Now not everyone has cabins on board.  On the aft deck there is a small area where they allow tents, so a small city has sprung up.

Home sweet home for 2 1/2 days or at least until the rains come

We wander around all day, and spend some nice time when it's not raining back on the aft deck.

Tom and I enjoying the views

Another day goes by and morning brings rain and wind, up to 35 mph.  We have a couple of spots where we go into the open sea for an hour or so, and couple of times the ride gets a bit rolly.  But then we head into a narrow area where we are met by a school or pod of dolphins, tons of them!

Dolphins everywhere!

Jan gets a great shot!

Then we have a really unusual experience.  We hear an announcement on the boat that a black bear is trying to swim across in front of the boat, and that if you look on the right side you should be able to see him, and sure enough there he was.  As we got closer he had a change of heart and decided to go back to the island from whence he had come:-)

Here he comes

There he goes

We make our first port after 36 hours of sailing in Ketchikan with hard rain and strong winds.

Cruise ships around the corner

Ketchikan

Fishing boats

Arriving at the dock in the rain

They announce the car deck is open, then they call Karen to move her coach to another spot on the car deck so several tractor trailers can load.

All moved

Then we continue to Wrangell.

Arriving in Wrangell

Then after Wrangell we enter the Wrangell Narrows on our way to Petersburg, and as the name suggests it is amazingly narrow and winding for a ship of our size and we all wonder more than once how we can possibly be so close to the shore without going aground?  But it is beautiful and exciting!

Really close to shore

Wow, look how close those rocks are

Look at all the channel markers!

And what we were doing all the while?
We were having a delicious dinner with what else but wine.

Then we docked in Petersburg our last stop until Juneau.

Petersburg

The long, long ramp to the ship

After Petersburg we all turned in for our 0515 arrival into Juneau.  We needed to collect our stuff, check out of our cabins and be ready on the car deck to disembark.  And as I started this long, long post, we were a little late, but in the pouring rain we all got safely off the ferry, parked the rigs in the parking area as we were way too early to get into our campground, and headed into Juneau proper for a delicious breakfast at the Sandpiper Cafe.