8/23/07 - Haines to Skagway - 15 water miles

We had decided several days ago to take the Alaska Marine Ferry to Skagway from Haines. It was over 360 miles to drive the route and 15 miles via ferry. Wildlife sightings today: None If you want to see where we are currently (8/31/07) go to: http://map.datastormusers.com/user2.cfm?user=2430

We had a hard time getting these early morning pictures to turn out. We were up at 4:30 as they were to start loading the ferry at 5:30. The ferry was an hour late getting in so everything was pushed back an hour. Seemed like it took a long time to load...this was a side loading ferry so I'm sure that takes longer. All in all it was a fun experience and a new one for us.

3 Alfa's (Richard, Pat & Joe) lined up to get on the ferry....they were just about the last to load. Karen, Hannah and I were some of the first to load on the ferry so we were able to get up on a higher deck to take pictures of the guys coming on (this was Pat coming down the ramp).

There were four cruise ships in port when we got to Skagway....some of them are huge!

Pat getting some video footage coming into Skagway.

This is our landing pad in Skagway. Pat is sitting waiting his turn to back up and then head out the ferry. With Richard & Karen's rig and the jeep you can see how tight of quarters there are on the lower deck.

8/22/07 - 5th Day in Haines

We have decided to take the Alaska Marine Ferry to Skagway....it is only 15 miles by water versus about 360 miles if we drive. We decided to eliminate a couple days of driving and get their the quick way. The ferry is scheduled to leave at 6:00 AM tomorrow so we can park in their parking lot overnight. We went to the Bald Eagle Foundation that is here in Haines this afternoon and watched a great movie on the bald eagles. The largest bald eagle gathering in the world takes place here in November with over 3,500 eagles on the Chilkat River for the late chum salmon run. There is a 3 day celebration and people from all over the world come.....it must really be a spectacular sight with that many of these majestic birds. Since this will probably be our last night with Dan & Jenny we all went out to dinner and had a great time. Sheppard's and the two of us went back out to "say good-bye" to the bears one last time....they have put on such a great show for us over the last 4 days. This time there were 4 bears out in different areas but it was too dark to get any good pictures. Wildlife sightings today: 4 Bears, Lots of eagles, and ducks. If you want to see where we are currently (8/27/07) go to: http://map.datastormusers.com/user2.cfm?user=2430

Since Dan & Jenny got here yesterday....we now have 5 Alfa's all lined up in a row.....it's kinda funny watching people when they walk by. We had to check out by 11:00 so Pat & Richard decided to wash the rigs again before heading our to our camp site @ The Alaska Ferry Terminal tonight.

An old building in Haines with flowers growing in front of it.

We saw this bear again at the weir fishing for salmon....think that is his favorite spot!

There were several families of this variety of ducks. This one only had 7 chicks and they were larger than the onea we saw the other day. They were eating the scraps from the fishermen.

Went back to the Chilkoot River to watch the bears again.

8/21/07 - 4th Day in Haines

I'm finally caught up on my blog again. It was bath day for Addie & Cody....they sure look a lot cleaner and softer! Pat went and played a round of golf today. Dan & Jenny pulled into the RV park so now we have 5 Alfa's here. Guess they are going to stay here 8 days and Larry & Marcheta will be catching up with them here. Wildlife sightings today: Lots of eagles. If you want to see where we are currently (8/22/07) go to: http://map.datastormusers.com/user2.cfm?user=2430

Went out to the Chilkoot River to see if the bears were out and guess we just missed them. This eagle was first in a tree, then got right down on the water and then to the rock....but we didn't ever see it catch any salmon.

8/20/07 - 3rd Day in Haines

Worked on my VISA account today....boy I've never had so many receipts before! We went with Richard & Karen and headed out of town to the Eagle Preserve. We saw a few but the majority that we have seen were over on the Chilkoot River feeding on salmon. We drove through Klukwan which is an Indian Village and then headed up the Porcupine Creek road. Wildlife sightings today: Lots of eagles. If you want to see where we are currently (8/22/07) go to: http:..map.datastormusers.com/user2.cfm?user=2430

We had lunch today at Chilkat Restaurant & Bakery.... finally found some reasonable prices and the food was excellent! They had a lot of hanging flower baskets and planted flowers in the front of their building....they were very pretty!

An active fishwheel, but we didn't see any salmon being caught!

We took the side road at Porcupine Crossing, following a pretty good dirt road about 9 miles and then turned off onto another side road.....guess we must like these narrow little roads!

Four Alfa's (Hal & Charlene Olsen from Houston are the 4th one).

8/19/07 - 2nd Day in Haines

We have decided to take the ferry to Skagway (which is 15 miles away by water). If we drive it is 359 miles! We could have gotten the ferry @ 2:15 AM tomorrow morning but will wait and take the one leaving Thursday (8/23) at 6:00 AM. Will cut out a couple days of traveling time in Canada which we don't mind eliminating at all. There was another Alfa that came into the campground today...so now there are four of us all lined up! Wildlife sightings today: 2 Grizzly Bears (up close and personal), Lots of eagles. If you want to see where we are currently (8/21/07) go to: http://map.datastormusers.com/user2.cfm?user=2430

We saw lots of eagles out by the river. There is an Bald Eagle Preserve 18 miles out of Haines. It is the annual gathering site of more than 3,500 bald eagles from mid-October through December. The eagles are drawn here by the late run of chum salmon. There are 300-400 resident eagles. It would be really awesome to be here when the large amount are here....they have pictures of where there are 10+ in the same tree!

This was the same bear we saw yesterday. We saw him across the river and hoped he would come across....he did! You can see the guy that was fishing and it didn't take him long to get out of the water. When the bear came out of the water on our side he was right down the embankment from the Jeep....we had gotten in it at this point but were blocked by other vehicles so we were very glad the bear decided to stay down by the river edge. He really put on a show for us for quite awhile.

Haines, AK

This was the 2nd bear that we saw. He was a big grizzly, but had an injured right hind leg. This particular river there are a lot of people fishing and when a bear comes along those fishing are to leave the water area....this guy left his tackle box, lunch and fish that he had just caught. After the bear destroyed the lunch box he looked around and saw a good size salmon that had been caught....he looked around and then grabbed the fish and ran up onto the road right in front of the jeep. I wasn't able to get a good picture of that but he was a little closer than we are comfortable with!