Our trip here from Skagway was the easiest so far. Although it would have taken us all day and 350 miles to get here by road, we loaded the RVs and cars onto the ferry in Skagway about 4:00 PM and were in Haines by 5:30. Only about 6 miles of driving was involved. The RV Park knew we were coming because when we pulled in, there was someone there to direct us right to our parking spots. Our rig had a problem right away; the leveling system would not work. It came on but would not start dumping the air bags or lowering the jacks. Geoff started taking it apart to see what the problem was and it magically started working again. That one will probably come back to haunt us again.
After we got plugged in and set up, we jumped in our car and drove to a restaurant down by the harbor. Nice place, good food, but there was only one waitress and the cook there, so the food was kind of slow coming out. This place is “Eagle Central”. You can usually see a bald eagle just about everywhere you look near the water. They are either flying over the water looking for fish, in a tree near the water, looking for fish, or eating a fish.
Ken had to move to another spot so he could try to get his satellite dish aligned properly. He was able to get a TV signal but the dish looks funny because it is nearly straight up and down. Internet access is pretty good in the park here, although I am still having problems uploading stuff. I hope this blog entry goes ok. Perhaps if I do not attach too many photos it will.
Our first full day here we went to the Chilkat State Park and Chilkoot State Recreation Area. In the first, there was a great overlook of Chilkat Inlet, which is west of the peninsula where Haines is. There was one eagle out there fishing and a big flock of Surf Scooters, which would all dive under at once in search of food. From our distance it would appear the flock would get smaller and then suddenly larger again when they would all surface. With our spotting scope it was much easier to see what was going on. Across the inlet, there were a couple of big glaciers we could see. The crevasses of the glaciers were very noticeably blue colored.
In Chilkoot State Recreation Area, we were right on the Lukat River which flows out of Chilkoot Lake, and there are many eagles along that river which fish it. We also saw human fishers there and a fish counting station, which indicated there had been thousands if fish passing up that river this year, but recently very few, probably because it is quite cool out now. We are waiting for summer to catch up with us. Later in the evening we came back and were able to also see bears in this area. These were our first Grizzly Bear spottings. Previously, in the Yukon, we only saw Black Bears.
So far in Alaska, the weather has not been conducive to taking scenic photos. Too bad because the scenery here is probably spectacular. On our third day here we were in touch with a flight sight seeing pilot who Ken had contacted and had told that we were interested in a flight if we could be assured of some clear weather to be able to see glaciers, mountains, etc. He had a flight in the early PM but said, if the weather looked like we would have good viewing, he would call us and we would go out around 5:00 PM. Well, no such luck, so we went out and drowned our sorrows in dinner. We are writing this on Saturday morning and things do not look much better for today.
We extended our stay here for an extra day because there is a bicycle race into town this afternoon and then a free salmon bake and entertainment in the evening. Also, we have 4 extra days before we are due in Fairbanks and only about 640 miles to go to get there. So using an extra day here to be able to get some free salmon and entertainment sounded like a good deal. It looks like much better weather in Fairbanks, but about the same as we have been seeing here until then.
No comments:
Post a Comment