Haines & Juneau, AK

August 6-16: We left our beautiful spot by the lake and headed toward Haines, AK. Yes, we are going back to Alaska! But, we had a neat place to go to first...

Goodbye Dezadeash Lake!

Luckily, the motorhome fit in the campground area and we found a place to park. We walked a short distance to a long set of stairs. Down the stairs we go to see... Million Dollar Falls! The water was incredibly loud in the small canyon. 

We had such vast and pretty views through Three Guardsman Pass! I wasn't able to get a clear picture, but there were Trumpeter Swan in a lot of the small lakes.

Soon, we past the Canadian Border checkpoint (we have read and heard that they can be sticklers about certain things, especially the cleanliness of your rig).

Hello, again, Alaska!!! US Border Checkpoint was a breeze.

Passing by the Chilkat River on the way into Haines. There is the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, which features the largest congregation of Bald Eagles during the late fall and winter. We are too early to see this and didn't see any Bald Eagles in this area at any point we were near the Chilkat River.

Before parking into our resting spot for the next 10 days, we had to get everything clean first, lol.

Our site at Oceanside RV Park in Haines. How could you get tired of this view?

We walked to nearly every single part of this small town during our stay. Top picture is of the cruise ship dock, and we saw a small cruise ship docked nearly each day. Bottom is the small boat harbor and marina.

We frequented the Chilkoot Lake State Recreation Site (not to be confused with Chilkat) on the online promise of seeing a bear! The drive there is stunning and we kept our eyes peeled for orcas and porpoise, but never saw them in this area.

Chilkoot Lake State Rec Site features a fish weir on the river outlet to the Lutak Inlet. Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game keeps count of the salmon by a real person 4 times a day and they display the count on a board that the employees update. Because the fish are trapped by the weir while the employees are not counting, bear come by to pick off the salmon who are unlucky.

These bears are very acquainted with how the weir operates in their favor. This was the first bear we had the pleasure of spotting at the Chilkoot River Weir. He snuck up on some fishermen at first (top photo), then made his way down the shore toward the weir.

He spent lots of time on and around the weir. 

Then he got kicked off by the employees so they could complete their count for the day.

After the bear was kicked off the weir, he made his way down the river to the inlet to try his hand at catching salmon there. He decided that coming across the bridge was the best way to his favorite fishing hole. This scared me and I moved back long before any others were planning their escape route, lol.

Last one on the bridge is bear food! LOL

He made it to his fishing spot without any incident.

We knew there was forecasted rainy weather soon, so we made every effort to enjoy outside while we could.

Cruise ship watching was a nightly occurrence by Sean. There are so many cruise ships on their way to and from Skagway, so he had plenty of them to see.

Skittles was getting on the stinky side, so we used the RV wash to wash her stinky butt. Don't worry! We didn't press the trigger and it didn't hurt her physically... maybe it hurt her pride a little... 

We took pity on our Yukon friends for not being able to enjoy Alaska this year due to an injury, so we went and got Brian & Patty a halibut. Luckily, Brian set everything up and we just had to pick up the fish and store it in the freezer for a few days. Funnily enough, the boat owner's wife was just in Lubbock for her brother's graduation from the TTU HSC Emergency Medicine Residency Program. She showed me a photo of him and I know him! I have seen him many times while working at UMC, lol. Small world...

We went back to Chilkoot Rec Site, and we saw a momma bear with 4 cubs! On the bottom pic, the cubs are standing on the hind legs to get a better look at the photographers on the far side past the truck.

Just look how cute they are!

The hike to Mt. Riley summit was not for the faint of heart. It felt as though we were going straight up into the clouds, which we actually ended up in the cloud bank, but there was a great reward even though it was too foggy to see any views. We found wild blueberries! Sean and I ate some, then the pups found out there were blueberries and soon started picking their own berries from the bushes, lol! This trail was also where Hershey and Skittles encountered their first porcupine, and luckily there was no touching of the creature by the dogs, thank God!

Hershey foraging for blueberries. We watched her close so she wouldn't get the wrong berries accidentally.

Whatever you do, avoid fueling in Haines if possible. The prices are outrageous!

Very cloudy end to a very cloudy day. 

The next hiking trail we tried out was Battery Point. It was very cloudy, again, and rained on and off throughout the day, but was still very pleasant. We took the pups with us on this trail as well. Apparently, we never actually made it all the way to Battery Point, but everyone was tired and we decided to make the trek back. We walked from the RV park to the trailhead, so we definitely had a long way to go.

While walking back, we past the large landslide scar from 2020, and notice when we are closer to town that there is a new cruise ship at the dock.

At Chilkat State Park we found a great trail, but we didn't have much time. The trail leads to Seduction Point that overlooks Cook Inlet, which Sean wanted to see, but the trail was 7+ miles long. We made it about a couple of hours in before turning back, and this portion of the trail didn't disappoint with the spectacular views. Rainbow & Davidson Glaciers were visible, along with views of Chilkat Inlet. This was a great hike, and next time we will be sure to allot an entire day to complete it. 

After our hike, Sean hit up the community spring water for a refill. He says it tasted good and was very cold.

We had a lazy morning due to the rain, and after it slowed down we walked to the grocery store and then checked out the marina at high tide. We stayed in and watched a movie I've never seen in all my years, The Sound of Music. I'm not sure why I've never seen it before... it was lovely!

We went back to the Chilkoot Park to see if our bears were active, and they definitely were! We also met a little family from the UK here and became friends with their 6 year old daughter. They were all very sweet! Unfortunately, they left before the bears came. It was starting to get pretty dark and foggy, so we decided to leave before it got worse. 

When we got to the motorhome, it was prime cruise ship watching time!

We had a special trip planned the next morning! Fjordland Express cruise to Juneau! We had taken this exact trip (at the Skagway location) 12 years ago and had an absolute blast, so we decided to take it again. Turns out, the family we met the night before was also taking the same trip.

This boat goes very fast and makes the 65 mile journey in about 3ish hours. There are lots of wildlife and scenery stops on the way.

Bald Eagle eating a salmon on the low tide shore rocks.

Meade Glacier

Eldred Rock Lighthouse

Morning fog clinging to the water and mountains. When getting closer to Juneau, people who were getting cell service started to get flash flood warnings for Mendenhall Glacier Lake ice dam failing (nearly a yearly occurrence). 

Stellar seals on the buoy. 

Humpback whales!

Where glacial melt and sea water mix.

When you see huge yachts you know you are close to Juneau.

Once we were dropped off on the dock, we knew we didn't want to ride the bus to Downtown Juneau where all the mega cruise ships would be congregated. We decided to go off the beaten path and hit up Costco! There were some interesting items stocked in the Juneau store! After we got a couple of essentials (paper plates and dishwasher detergent), we went on a mission to find some lunch. We tried a local Mexican food restaurant, but it was too long a wait, so we took a bus back to the Auke Bay Harbor and found a brewery restaurant to try out. It was tasty! We did not witness any flooding from the glacier river while we were there. To waste a bit more time until our departure, Sean bought a coke from the convenience store and we sat at their picnic tables with a view of the harbor and enjoyed the sun. 

A short time later, it was time to load up for the ride back. Beautiful views all around!

Humpback whale waving us on!

Eagle Glacier

Gill net fishing.

Closeup of Eldred Rock Lighthouse.

Seals on the rocks at Eldred Rock.

We were back at Haines around 7pm and we took the pups for a long walk around town. We eventually ended up at the cruise ship dock at stop to see the happenings before heading back home to turn in for the night.

We took the pups for another long walk in the morning because we planned to go kayaking after lunch.

Sean got his drone out for a few pictures of Haines.

Chilkoot Lake was a beautiful kayak experience! Lots of waterfalls, glaciers, and mountains.

We found a white beach to stop at and found a trail of multiple bear paw prints!

Evidence of bear activity on the shore.

We had a great time burning lots of calories on this lake, lol.

Once thoroughly exhausted, we had a quick dinner and enjoyed the dry weather with a fire.

Sean got a drone pic of the contraption that serves as a service dock in low tide. We were wondering how this worked and luckily got a demonstration!

The next day, we decided to bike to the Chilkoot Rec Area, because why not?

Again, found a fisherman being followed by a bear, lol!

Bear paw print in a turnout.

Luckily, the bear decided to go under the bridge this time. 

We rode over the bridge and Lutak Spur Rd. and found some beautiful poppies and a neighborhood library. We didn't find any books to take from this one, but if I had known about it before I could have left one of the books I had finished. Once we got back to the motorhome, we enjoyed a well deserved ice cream sandwich!

Our after dinner walk included going to Fort William Seward and having a look around. There were multiple museums, a couple of restaurants and bars, Historic buildings made into multi-family units, a large park in the center, and a build ruin turned artwork. They had a great view from the upper Historic buildings!

I had neglected to use my freshly picked salmonberries from Valdez right away, so I decided to freeze them to bake a pie for later. Today was the day I was going to make that pie! I didn't have enough of just the salmonberries, so I added blackberry, raspberry, and the rest of a bag of frozen blueberries. Unfortunately, I don't have an oven, so the convection microwave would have to do. It seemed to turn out lovely (minus the juice escaping on the edges), and it tasted amazing!

That evening, mama bear and cubs graced us with their presence once again. We were waiting at the weir to see if they might come there, but we saw a hubbub of people further up the river and turns out they were there instead! Top pic shows mama bear fishing, bottom pic shows cubs playing on log out of the water.

We couldn't resist going to the quirky Hammer Museum! It was indeed quite fun to look through all the different kinds of hammers the world has seen.

The last day in Haines, we drove up to the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve to walk their boardwalk trail to see if we could spot any eagles. Unfortunately, no bald eagles were found, but we were also quite early for that season. The walk provided some very pretty leaf fall and reminder that fall was just around the corner...

Our last after dinner walk in Haines took us to find random headstones in the trees near a park by the marina and to Portage Cove State Recreation Site with a great view of Haines.  (Second photo is of a slug. They were abundant on the pavement after rain, and Hershey was checking it out, lol.)

"That's a wrap" on Haines!