New road. Now we’re on the Cassiar Highway; headed south. The scenery is not as dramatic as yesterday. Less rugged mountain peaks and more rolling round mountains. More golden.
Mountain Shadow RV Park. We’ve heard from several people that this is the nicest RV park on the entire Alaska trip.
They could be right.
3,278 miles to Sandpipers.
Haines was to be our last stop in Alaska. We were going to drive off back through Canada this morning.
Plans change.
Instead of driving all the way back out to Haines Junction then on to Whitehorse, we took a one-hour ferry ride twenty miles to Skagway. Skagway, our first stop in Alaska and now our last.
Haines and Skagway part of trip
Putting the bus on the ferry was a trip.
It was low tide and a steep ramp, so required blocking underneath the rear wheels while I inched along to keep from scraping the rear end.
Then some tight turns on the car deck, tighter than the bus can make, so “Y” turns. It’s not that difficult really, just do what the people wearing vests tell you to do.
Tonight’s windshield view over the harbor.
Dinner at the Skagway Fish Company.
Alaskan King Crab stuffed Halibut.
Perfection.
Next up, fifteen hundred miles of road between here and Vancouver, B.C.
I mean Tuesday.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019 9:25 PM
There is a thing here called a tidal grid. I saw one while we were in Whittier, kind of a wood frame underwater. I observed it but didn’t recognize what it was. We spotted another one here in Haines, a wood frame underwater, and the light bulb went on.
Looking down on it from above.
At low tide, it’s completely exposed.
The idea is, you float your boat over the rack at high tide and tie it off to the pilings.
Then as the tide goes out, the boat is in a makeshift dry dock.
You’ve got several hours to work on it before the tide comes back in and floats it again.
Pure practical low-tech. Brilliant!
The concept works pretty well here in Alaska where there is often a 10 to 12 foot tidal swing every day. It would be a little harder to implement in South Texas where there is a 1 to 2 foot swing.
Haines, Alaska.
Action stills from town.
I’ve fixed the trip map. I’ve put a line on it so our route home from Homer to here so far will be crystal clear…
Oh. And a bear.
A nice healthy young sow I believe.
We weren’t out on a bear tour or anything. We were just down the road a little in Haines.
She’s got her eye on me.
Here she is at the water’s edge turning over rocks to see what’s to eat underneath.
Grizzly bear at low tide video
Here’s a different bear, wet from head to toe, sitting next to a salmon weir, picking off fish at will.
Back to Alaska! We were only out of Alaska for two days and one night, so we didn’t even change our clocks. From our camp south of Destruction Bay, we headed south to Haines Junction, tanked up, and continued south crossing first into British Columbia, then back across the border into Alaska again!
Valdez to Haines part of the trip map
We’ve run out of scenery superlatives.
And what is this on the mountaintops; that thing called Termination Dust?
3,699 miles to Sandpipers.
No internet last night. None tonight. A foggy start.
But another day of good weather and great scenery.
We stopped for fuel and supplies in Tok, then continued east crossing the border into Yukon Territory; past Beaver Creek, Snag Junction, and Quill Creek. Past Burwash Landing and Destruction Bay. Settled at an overlook on Kluane Lake. Another boondock.
Delta Junction to Destruction Bay part of the trip map
We’ve kind of made a mess of this map. With all those pins, it’s probably hard to even pick out where we are on it.
Tonight’s stop. We had it all to ourselves.
6,104 kilometers (3,802 miles) to Sandpipers. Our destination isn’t Sandpipers yet though, it’s Haines, AK, our last stop in Alaska this trip. We started out referring this as our trip of a lifetime; probably our only trip ever to Alaska. It didn’t take long before we started referring to attractions we skipped, missed, or discovered too late as “On the list for our *next* trip to Alaska.”
