A Day in Haines

Robert, Saturday, June 28

After getting into our site so late last night we didn’t get to bed until late. Then we didn’t get going early this morning. Both of us were having problems with our email and I spend a long time on the phone with tech support trying to get it fixed. Then process wasn’t helped by the fact that the first tech support guy could barely speak English and wasn’t too smart. I finally hung up and called to get someone I could understand. After the second person tried to fix the problem by making changes on my computer, I was switched to “Gary” who actually spoke English. Gary quickly determined that the problem was not on my end but rather with their mail server. Gary had to refer the problem to someone else who is suppose to get the problem fixed in 24-48 hours. Swell! After that we went to the fairgrounds where there was a Saturday farmer’s market. We had in mind a farmer’s market we had seen several years ago in Anchorage where there was great looking produce. We had commented in Anchorage that if we were camping we would have stocked up. Well, this farmer’s market was nothing like that. There were about ten stands and none of them had any produce. They had things like home knitted caps, home made jam, and home made jewelry. We saw the whole thing in about two minutes. In the fairgrounds was a movie set for the movie “White Fang.” It was a bunch of old looking buildings that were arranged to look like it was about 1860. As we got such a late start, we decided that we would spend three nights in Haines rather than just two. We went back to the campground (about a quarter of a mile from the farmer’s market), registered for one more day, did a few more things, and set out again to explore. We drove through downtown (it took less than a minute) and then drove a way up the Haines Highway to see a bald eagle preserve. Apparently in the fall, thousands of bald eagles converge on this area. The Haines Highway winds along the Chilkat River where there is a late salmon run. We saw as many eagles as we saw moose–absolutely zero. Then we drove back into town to see if we had missed anything with our first one minute tour. Turns out that we had seen it all. It was back to the campground as we did have a good Wifi connection so we could get caught up on the blog. As it was spitting rain, we decided not to try to grill something outside. The weather is clearing up but it is not quite there. Maybe as we get a little further north and inland we will see more sunshine. I did compute how much fuel we save by taking the ferry rather than towing. We traveled a total of 705 miles on the ferry. Towing on flat roads we get about 10 mpg. In June we paid about $4.90 per gallon for fuel so we saved $345 on fuel by letting the ferries tow us. Added to that we were in places that had 20 miles of road so we just didn’t drive too far all of the month of June. And we saw places and things we never saw before.