Haines

We are leaving Haines Junction and heading to Haines on the Haines Highway. (Believe it or not that makes sense, or does it?)  


This route was originally a trail used by Chilkat Tlingit traders, and was known as "The Grease Trail", due to the transport of their product, a very greasy fish.  I forgot the fish name.  Later it became the Dalton Trail, used by some prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-1899.  Other mining kept the lower Dalton Trail active through the years following its establishment. The British Columbia Provincial Government converted its portion of the trail to a wagon road in 1909 (and they still keep it that way--only joking) when copper mining began at Copper Butte and Glave Mountain.   In 1911, thirty tons of ore were shipped from the mines!  In 1943 the U.S. Army built this highway as an alternate route from the Pacific Ocean to the Alaska Highway, in case the White Pass and Yukon railway from Skagway should be blocked.  The total cost of the construction was 13 Million dollars.

In the decades after the war, maintenance was spotty at best.  They had a lot of problems with blizzards and mudslides.  In the 60's and 70's everyone traveling on the road was monitored by radio.  In 1963 Congress got involved due to complaints, and a reconstruction project was finally funded, to provide year round access.  This included the Haines Highway and parts of the Alaskan Highway.  With Congressional backing it only took until the 1980's to complete.  The maintenance is shared by the Yukon and Alaska.  As usual with British Columbia nothing is done.  The part going through B.C. doesn't even have a number.   Do you remember that B.C. stands for Bring Cash?

See what happens when you start reading all these signs up here?  This post will be all talk and no pictures.  (Oops, My Dear Bride just vetoed that idea.  Probably a good idea.)  All that said, the Haines Highway is one of the most spectacular drives in North America, with high peaks, glaciers, rivers and lakes all along the way.  

One of the Lakes is this one, Dezadeash Lake.
I am driving the spell checker crazy and I am not talking about My Dear Bride, or maybe I am)

Tatshenshini River coming out of the Alsek Mountain Range. (there goes the spell checker again)

The Alsek Mountain Range is running along beside us and will be for a while

Here is a Hanging Glacier--or this and the following pictures may be part of the Novatak or Grande Plateau Glacier and Icefields.

 Mt. Mansfield, not the famous one from Vermont either.  (Where I camped as a child.  -P)








 This is the Three Guardsmen.

But it was not all snow, ice and mountains.  Here My Dear Bride has found some flowers.

Yep, there were flowers up here.

And there was a small matter of a Grizzly and her cub popping out for a second then going back into the brush.  My Dear Bride once again would not go ask them to pose for more pictures.

 On a Small Lake we saw these swans.  I could not tell if they were Trumpeter or Tundra Swans.  They were pretty far away.

That white stuff beside the road was not snow but dandelions, now ready to disperse its seeds.

This is the Tathinsha Mountain Range.  It goes all the way past Haines.

  I am not sure if this is the Tatsevshini River or the Chilkat River or after they have met each other.

Glave Mountain, had a lot of copper come out of there.

Off in the distance is the Saksaia Glacier coming off the Cathedral Peaks.

 We are now in the Valley of the Eagles and the Chilkat River runs through it.  We will be near it the rest of the time we are in Haines.  But first we rest.

And My Dear Bride found another bench at a rest stop and bird viewing area.










 
Here in the Valley of the Eagles and starting in September through early December Haines welcomes over 3,500 Bald Eagles to this beautiful Chilkat River Valley. Spectators from around the world come to observe this fascinating migratory event.  But we are here in August.  So how many Eagles did we see?  A few.  In fact we took 46 pictures of Eagles.  Most not worth keeping or showing but you will see some.

Here is where most of the water for the river is coming from; runoffs like this from the glaciers and icefields.

This is a fish trap, the first working one we have seen here. This device catches fish, operating much as a water wheel. A wheel complete with baskets and paddles is attached to a floating dock. The wheel rotates with the stream current and the baskets capture fish traveling upstream. The fish caught in the baskets fall into a holding tank. When the holding tank is full, the fish are removed.  I already checked, they are illegal in Oregon.  Darn.  This one was on the Chilkat river.

We made it to Haines and found a nice place called Hitch-up RV Park.  We were going to wash everything but it was a drizzly day, so we went for a ride.

 
We drove out to Chilcoot River and Lake and we would see bears and eagles there, we were told.

This is the dam on the Chilkoot River.  In the middle there is a ranger counting fish.  There was a big sign there saying "Don't park here, this is a bear access zone."  so naturally every one parked there.  It is wonder the bears don't starve with all the people wanting to take their picture blocking their way to the water.

We drove on past to the other side of the river and saw this bear and cub.  Got a couple good shots of them.

She turned to head back to the trees and the cub was not happy.  Think it was hungry for a fish,  followed her out anyway.  (Chuck:  the bear psychologist!)  Felt a little sorry for them, what with all us people there to take pictures & not just tourists.
Perhaps the bears came back after dark.

The guy and gal in the middle of the river, fishing, ignored the whole thing. 

An eagle on the shore fishing also ignored the whole thing.  It was too busy eating, but it was also having its picture taken.







 
It was getting to be a long day so we had dinner at one of the waterfront restaurants and headed back to the dirty RV, not for the first time on this trip.  But we did use the laundromat and showers, so at least we were clean.

The next morning we went to the American Bald Eagle Foundation. The Bald Eagle Foundation is a Natural History Museum and Live Raptor Center, with live bird presentations.  While we were there the live raptor demonstrations included 2 Bald Eagles, 4 owls, 2 Redtailed Hawks, a Eurasian Eagle owl, 2 Falcons and a Raven.

This is the Eurasian Eagle Owl.  I knew it was not a native of Alaska, so I asked how it got here.  The answer was simple--by plane.  The foundation helps birds that are injured, permanently or temporarily.  Since they are very good at it, a lot of birds are sent to them.  This one stared at me every time I came within its view.  You, of course, know that owls cannot rotate their eyes and must turn their heads.  

 

 

My Dear Bride got this from the side, while it was staring at me.  Very young.  At maturity it will be one of the largest owls in the world.  It has a long way to go.  It lives in Europe and Asia.  









 I borrowed the next picture to show what it will look like grownup.

   

Yep, it has a way to go.

They also had a large diorama showing 148 different wildlife and fish.  Here are a few of the critters they had.  I must say, they have some great taxidermists  in Alaska. 

Red Fox  (I love their furs)

Grey Fox

A big Moose Family

Porcupine  (I get "Ouchy" just looking at him!  -P)

The Wolverine    (nasty!)

There were a lot more, but you can see them anywhere.  Pick a Alaskan critter and write it on Google and VOILA!, there you see it.   But we are going to look for the real thing. 

Deciding to check out the little community of Haines, first we drove to Fort Seward.  It was a bunch of older houses, now used for everything but military.  It was active 1904 to 1946, but is now privately owned.  Some nice views from there.

Across Chilkat Inlet you see the coast mountains.  Interestingly, Chilkat Inlet and Lynn Canal, go all the way to Skagway, and form the longest fjord in the world.

  




Looking down on part of the town of Haines

 We visited the Hammer Museum. You may know that the hammer was humanity's first tool.  Here they have over 1,600 of them, so many different styles & uses.  This place is listed as one of the "top ten places to visit in Alaska", and it really was interesting.  Look at the size of that hammer in front--of course it belonged to Paul Bunyan. 

They even used hammers to hold up the planter boxes.  

My Dear Bride wanted to go on a ride on the hammer trike but it was hammered down.   

How many pick axe and hammerhead trellises have you seen? 

or mounted hammerheads?

Looking down Haines Main St. and over the Chilkoot Inlet

We had two night's dinners in the restaurant of that orange building; very good!

Haines small boat harbor

Along the roadsides, Red Elderberries made a pretty colorful contrast











We decided to take the Alaskan Marine Highway (the ferry) 14 miles from Haines to Skagway, rather than driving 359 miles, which route would have required us to backtrack on the roads to both coastal towns twice.  The ferry leaves every day at 4 PM, so since it was getting that time, we thought we should go scope out the procedure.  The ferry dock is a just a few miles out of town.

 This was the first view of the ferry.

Here it is, the Malespina, pulling up to the dock


This guy (called a helmsman) is steering the boat so that its side door is exactly positioned at the offloading ramp.

That is an RV going in the ferry door.  There were at least 20 RV's and lots more cars than that, and they all fit in!  I asked the ticket seller, "How do they find room for of all of them on the boat?"  She told me they used a shoehorn--a great big shoehorn.  I knew she was kidding.

After deciding maybe they knew what they were doing we headed for the Chilkat River again. 

We saw this eagle nest with a young eagle and a parent, or maybe a babysitter or something.  These nests are added onto every year and they can get up being several tons big.  Nests the size of pickups have been blown out of the trees.

  

These were a couple of the better shots we got of the Eagles.  We found that, like the bears, they don't pose.  

We saw a bear come out between two cars parked--in the no parking zone--20 people with cameras standing there.  When this big Grizzly came running out, those stupid people ran--and every sign tells you, "Don't run from bears".  Luckily the bear continued on up into the trees.  Don't ask why we didn't get that picture.  (OK, I'll tell.  From inside our car, I was so excited and just wanted to LOOK with my eyes, not at the camera, as the bear walked right in front of the car!  -P)  But it would have been a great picture.  We got this picture a little later.

This was a long zoomed shot.  Sometimes I wish I had one of those fancy cameras with the big lens, etc., but my and My Dear Bride's point and shoot cameras do good enough for us.

This one posed a little--it was a grey dismal day, but My Dear Bride did a good job.

Today is the day we leave Haines, using that Alaskan Marine Highway ferry for the first time.  

But first we had to wash the rigs, again.  We did not want to overload that ferry with the Canadian dirt we had picked up.  The ferry departure wasn't until 4 PM, tho' our campsite check out time was 11AM.  So plenty of time, and after the wash, out to the ferry terminal we went, to see if that big shoehorn really would work for us!

The cars and small trucks were loaded first.  There were a bunch of them, and a bunch of RVs too.  If I had thought of it I would have counted them, but I had other things on my mind, like shoehorns.

My Dear Bride, driving the Honda, was aboard first and is taking a picture.  Of what? Me,  I'm still sitting in the parking lot, taking a picture of her.

All those big RVs on the other side of me are going on before me.  So is that little car.  In fact, I was wondering if My Dear Bride had hotel money to stay in Skagway until I got there.

I  was the last one on!  And there was no shoehorn, just a very full ferry.  While we got this view can you see where we can put several more solar panels on the top on the RV?

 Having this RV in front of me reassured me.  If that one can make it, I can.  I didn't like the way the crewman standing by the door looked around and shook his head when he saw me coming down the ramp.  I think I was the only one that drove on that had to back into a space.

I climbed up to topside on the ferry, found My Dear Bride, and we said goodbye to Haines.

We are now sailing down the Lynn Canal.  For the first time this trip, someone else is driving.

Catch you later.