My Day 22 - Haines, Alaska

Subject: My Day 22 – Anchorage to Haines, Alaska

Today I meet Lisa on the road to Haines, Alaska. She tells me that she bought a two bedroom home on an acre of land on the Big Island of Hawaii for $60,000 at auction. She can’t wait to spend time working on it and using it. According to her, the 90 year old former resident keeled over one day in one of the rooms, the property wouldn’t sell, so it went to auction. Her furniture is coming from several other Hawaii foreclosed homes.

Lisa was dressed in her bright neon green work jumpsuit, stylish arctic boots and a helmet with a turtle sticker on it. Her bug like dark sunglasses completed the road safety package. The only pale wind burnt skin that showed was above her chin and below her eyebrows. Lisa held me at bay with her large STOP sign on a pole. This time my delay on this double wide broken gravel up and down dust road was for only fifteen minutes. Road crews are everywhere today fixing up what man built while nature keeps flexing the original trail that Dalton built. This morning I was the only vehicle on the road to Tok, Alaska so, it gave Lisa a chance to talk to someone other than the hungry Arctic mosquitoes.

The scenery is mostly of a glacier as the road winds along the scenic highway. I stop to take pictures but, once again forgot that I was wearing shorts. A short time later I’m scratching the quarter size seven bites that I can clearly see while driving and scratching. I’m seen perfected the drive jeep, turn on the camera, ready, aim, shoot, swoop back on the lane and keep moving photo shot. All my shots are mostly instinctive shooting.

I clear customs again – this time it’s back to the good old USA. A single customs agent steps out of his working home and into a booth between all hours except 11 PM and 7 AM. Another forty or so miles to go and I’m at Haines, Alaska and the ferry roadway of the inside passage. Haines is also known as the valley of Eagles. Before the day is over I photograph all the eagles I want including one lone one on the beach.

I quickly find great lodging at a B&B that Laura and her husband built around 1993-94. The original garage housed some sort of power plant for Fort Seward. The fort was built due to a border land dispute with Canada. Send your Army soldiers to keep the peace and let them know you mean business. This part of the old fort now has a bed and breakfast over it with one of the most scenic views of a busy but rather noisy seaport. Cost is $85.00 per night with a farmer’s breakfast at your chosen times between 7 AM and 9 AM. I choose 7:30 AM. The Yukon was "larger than life" as they say on their travel brochures but I tend to like the sea or coastal towns the best. Driving through the Yukon is sort of like driving through Texas as it is big. Its larger than all the New England states put together and more than twice the size of Great Britain. The Yukon portion of the Alaska highway that I just traveled wound its way through river valleys and dozens of streams and rivers that are what is known as the Mackenzie watershed. This is where it all drains to the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea.

This morning I stopped at the State Ferry building to pick up boarding passes for the Jeep and I for the Sunday Haines to Juneau, Alaska portion of the trip. I then drove towards Chilkoot Lake; parked at a beach access spot and cleaned out and organized the jeep. Next I drove a little more and was at the end of the road; where I started my hike of several miles trying to reach a waterfall that I could clearly see but, the entanglement and overgrowth made it impossible to reach and photograph its falls. Slipping and sliding on mounds of kelp, hopping glacier deposited boulders and only falling twice was quite an achievement.

While I was dirty and sweaty I felt that washing off the bug encrusted jeep at the local car wash was a good thing but first I needed to break a $50.00 bill. The Tesoro mini-mart lady and I had quite a discussion as to why their ATM’s only spit out $50.00’s. I said it was because of Haines high cost prices; like what I was now paying; $6.41 for a bottle of water and a gas anti-freeze additive. She said no – that was normal; they all spit out $50.00’s must be a Haines thing.

I'm at the Haines, Alaska library now - gotta go before they close! 

See you on the road!

Trawlercat