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.