A Rainbow, Fort Seward, Eagle Sanctuary – Haines Alaska

On Saturday I was looking at the Chilkoot Inlet, and I see this sparkle in the water…so I step out and off to the left was this Rainbow…a Rainbow which was under the clouds, running along the far shore of the inlet.  Had a Cruise Ship been coming or going from Skagway, it would have gone right through it.  This was a type of Rainbow that I had never seen before…very interesting.

Here is a shot of Fort William H. Seward, which lies on the western portion of Haines.  The fort was established in 1898, and was the eleventh fort established during the gold rush.  By 1904, 85 wood-frame buildings was constructed. However, by 1925, it was the only military installation in Alaska, and remained the only installation until 1940.  By 1945, with the end of WW2, and with other nicer, more strategically placed installations having been built, Fort Seward was shut down.  It is now an Art Colony, and has accommodations for housing tourist, a few restaurants, and is right next to where the cruise ships dock.

   

We drove through the old fort, which is not very ADA friendly, but it as very interesting looking at the 100 year old buildings, most of which were in good condition (although a few needed a fresh paint job.)

       

One of the things that Haines is known for is the eagles.  Although we saw a lot of eagles over in Valdez, and some in Seward, Homer and even Skagway…Haines has the largest number of Eagles … but that is during the winter.  They flock to the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve just north of Haines.

When one drives to Haines, they pass right through the Preserve.  In Autumn, when the Chum are running up the Chilkat River and cold weather and longer nights are at hand, flocks of Eagles descend upon the Preserve for the winter, eating up the Chum Salmon, and anything else that resides along the Chilkat River which does not freeze over.

This view is looking north to the Preserve.  The river is very wide, but not real deep.  Today it is still full of water, lots of water, running down into the Pacific. 

Now we are not going to be anywhere near Alaska when the cold weather hits, when the snow falls…so I found this picture above which shows what it can look like along the river during the fall/winter.  I saw some pictures where the eagles are so numerous you could not count them.  Some years they have counted 3,500 eagles at the Preserve.

Around the 20 mile marker from Haines there is a pullout where there is a nice set of information boards, like the one above, pertaining to Eagles, the Preserve, and other animals found in the area.  I like this one because it shows the life cycle of a Bald Eagle going from chick to the stately look that we are accustom to seeing and knowing as the Bald Eagle.  It take five years from going from chick to having the full white head, and familiar look that we associate with the Bald Eagle …which, by the way, is not bald.

Our time here in Haines has drawn to a close…we plan to be on the road by 9 am with our first destination being Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory where we need to stock up on Skruffy food, go to Walmart for more insulin for her, and then to the Real Canadian Superstore to stock up on supplies to get us to the lower 48.  After a few days, we will then head to Hyder, where we hope to see some bears feeding on Salmon in the Fish River.

Note to family:  We will not have cell phone use for a number of days, perhaps more than a week.  Not sure if we will have coverage in Hyder or not.  We will have Internet use most nights.

Haines Alaska

Last night two cruise ships past by along the inlet headed out of Skagway to the Pacific Ocean.  In all, four cruise ships sailed through last night, and two today, along with the one which docked here in Haines.  For every dozen cruise ships that go into Skagway, Haines gets one…which does not bother us at all.  It is nice seeing them sail on, but the tourist that get off of them don’t need to be dealt with by us. 

      

Here are three of the Skagway Cruise ships above…the two last night are at the top, and you can see them in the first picture way above.  The third one came through this evening.  When we were in Skagway nearly seven weeks ago, we saw each of these three ships…or ones like them.

The above map is a “Kayak Route” between Skagway and Haines.  The two cities are only a dozen miles apart as the crow (or should I say Raven) flies, but by car, unless you load the car on a large ferry, it is 350 driving miles away.

One would think that they would connect these two cities by some sort of road.  In fact, there is a partial road which leads from each city toward the other…but they end way short.  The map to the left shows, in red, the area which still needs to have a road.  The blue shows the road and the ferry route.  The map above is the current road map between the two cities…which is a long 350 miles, going into British Columbia, into the Yukon, back into British Columbia and back into Alaska.  Some people, especially those who are not in a large RV, will load up on the ferry.  For us, it would cost around $350 for the RV, car, and both of us.

Above is the “Fast Ferry” which connects both cities for pedestrians only (and bicycles) which only cost $71 round trip…extra $5 for a bicycle each way.  The trip takes about 40 minutes once it leaves the dock.  The fast ferry also goes from either of these cities to Juno too…for $170 you can get a day package which includes a trip to a glacier outside of Juno.

We really like it here at Oceanside RV Park in Haines.  It is a relaxing time.  The lady who owns and operates the park is the greatest!  Just after we got setup yesterday, our new neighbors Pat and Ron and their dog Murphy, came by.  (That is them sitting out along the water above.)  Pat came first and knocked on our open door. 

"Hello, you don't know me but..." We have all been there before, right?  Makes you wonder what is coming next, right?? Well here it is....

"...you don't know me, but, I have been praying for this little one (Skruffy who is at the screen door looking out at her), I have been following your travels through Alaska, we have missed each other but have been to the same places, and I am just so glad to be able meet this little one and know she is doing well...I have prayed and prayed, and when I read the "breath in, breath out" blog you posted, tears came to my eyes, I thought you had lost her, I am so glad she is ok..."

She added that at first she wanted to slap me after she read the post because while reading it she thought we must have lost poor little Skruffy and she cried all the way through it…but she said she understood the emotions we were under, and really appreciated the post.  Come to find out that they travel in their Roadtrek Motorhome Van, but live in a 5th wheel just 30 miles away from our condo in Florida.  What a small world it is, what a nice couple they are…and Murphy too.
 

Haines is known for the many bald eagles that live here during the winter.  Around mid-October there will be some 200-400 eagles around the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve near Haines.  The river remains above freezing during the cold winter giving eagles access to food…lots of food when the chum salmon run in October.  Some eagles stay year around, while other take off, returning in the fall.  This guy above was right along the beach area in front of the RV Park.

Above is a monument to those who lost their life, mostly on the waters, a totum pole, and the cruise ship that came into Haines this morning.  The wording on the monument is as follows:

"AS ALASKANS WE STRIVE TO MEET THE CHALLENGES
   OF THE SOMETIMES HARSH AND UNFORGIVING
      ENVIRONMENT OF THE LAST FRONTIER.
THIS MEMORIAL IS DEDICATED TO THE SPIRIT OF
  OUR LOVED ONES, WHO HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES
   FACING THOSE CHALLENGES IN A PLACE THEY
       LOVED AND CHOSE TO CALL HOME.
THEIR VOICES ECHO ON THE WIND, THEIR SPIRITS
   SOAR ABOVE THE CLOUDS AND THEIR LOVE
   SURROUNDS US IN THE BEAUTY OF ALASKA.
THEY ARE GONE BUT WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN."

This is a shop of the small harbor…the RV park is just beyond the harbor.

    

Above, the boat Nightingale greats you at the entrance to the harbor (walking or driving), and right is a Keystone Driller used in the gold mining industry back in the early 1900’s.

Drove along “Beach Road” to the south of Haines and got this picture of the Taiya Inlet to the north…it is that break in the mountains in the center of the pictures.  Skagway is on the northern end of this inlet, and the cruise ships come and go through this inlet, right past Haines, which is to the left just out of the picture.

    

As the last ship leaves from Skagway, and the ship that was here in Haines meet out in the inlet, it is time to call it a night.  Well, it will be night in another few hours (10 pm and still very light outside).  Tomorrow we hope to visit a few of the state parks that are in the area, weather allowing of course.

Ever Make a Promise? – Tok to Haines

Six weeks ago we hit the hardest, toughest, most un-RV friendly road ever…the road between Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek in the Yukon Territory.  There were times we could not go over 15 mph, and even then the RV felt like it was going to shake apart…literally shake apart.  By the time we crossed into Alaska, Marcia let me know that there was “NO WAY” she would go through that again.  People with MS cannot take brain shaking, cut wrenching, butt crushing type of things like that ride was.  It was 45 miles of pure HELL!  And that is where the promise came in…  “Honey, they will have 6-8 weeks to finish all of that before we pass over it again, I PROMISE it will be better…”   Well, Sunday was the day of reckoning…

The construction six weeks ago was broken up into three distinct areas along the 100+ mile route between Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek, I will call them the Eastern, Middle and Western Sections.  More precise, the construction started about 25 miles west of Destruction Bay, and 25 miles east of Beaver Creek.  I am pretty good about remembering roads I have traveled before…when I was just shy of turning 8 years old, I walked from school to our new home in South Sacramento, a trek of 2 1/2 miles, crossing over two very busy streets…and the kicker was, I wasn’t suppose to do that…but to this day, I still feel like I was following the directions that mom gave me.  Anyway, that whooping is behind me, if you know what I mean, but it does illustrate just how good I am at directions, and at remembering how to get somewhere.  But on our drive this past Sunday, I just could not identify where the Western Section of the three constructions zones was…until we passed over the fresh rough pavement of the middle section when I told Marcia, “I think we already passed over the western patch and we are just now finishing up the middle patch…”, they indeed had put pavement on two of the three rough areas.  YES!  My only clue was that there was no road markers…not that other sections had good road markers…sometimes you are driving on pavement with a faint yellow line separating the two sides of the highway that looks like it was painted back in the 70’s!  Then we hit the worse section, which went by Lake Keethmark (picture above)…section one, the most eastern section of the construction when we were on it six weeks ago.  And you know what, it was not that bad.  Even on Sunday they were working on it.  It now had three of four bad areas which only lasted a few tenths of a mile each.  And there was a road crew working on these areas, and we were being escorted through them.  They did open up some new work areas, but they were short areas, and again, not nearly as tough to go over.  Thank you Lord Almighty, that was one promise I did not know how I was going to keep!

Soon we were along Kluane Lake again, and it was like a mirror…and the bad road was behind us.  And Marcia still had her nerves intact.  And the motorhome handled what harsh areas there were very well.  We both finished the trip tired, but happy.

    

The only wildlife we saw between Tok and Haines Junction was some Trumpeter Swans…about three or four pair in total, and…

    

This Yukon Raven, (Yukon’s Official Bird) which tormented poor Skruffy at our RV Park in Beaver Creek.   Honesty, we saw lots of Ravens…but this one here was sure giving Skruffy heartache. 

      

Hey Bubba, you want to come and see the Raven…yep, that’s what I thought.

It was two real good driving days.  When we got to Haines Junction, we stayed at the FasGas RV Park ($25 Canadian) and had a good dinner which I brought back to the motorhome from the Village Bakery and Deli.  Since we had already blogged about our trip from Haines Junction to Tok six weeks ago, and even though we took another 100+ pictures along that route coming back, I decided to devote most of this post to the trek from Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, to Haines, Alaska, which was new ground.  For this portion of the trip I will let the pictures tell the story.  (Remember, you can click on a picture for a larger version)

    

    

    

    

    

    

 

 

 

    

    

     

And that brought us to within just a few miles of Haines.  What a wonderful drive.  We loved the drives to Skagway, to Valdez, to Seward, to Homer, (actually, all of the Kenai Peninsula), to Anchorage, to Denali, and now to Haines…let alone much of the drive along the Alaska Highway.  It is all so amazing.  Tonight we are at the Hitch-up RV Park in Haines, but tomorrow we move over to the Oceanside RV Park for 6 nights, providing us views of the Chilkoot Inlet.  Unfortunately, we are going to be faced with some rain over the next 4-6 days.  But that is part of the adventure.  More from Haines soon.