Haines, AK

My dad wanted to ride the ferry while he was here, so I decided to take him to Haines.  I had never been there, and it was one of the shorter rides at 4.5 hours.  (Sitka is 4.5 hours too, but I had already been there.)  It was a morning ride, and the weather wasn't that great so the views were only ho-hum.  They also left the lounge lights off, so I couldn't do any reading unless I went to the cafeteria.  (Remind me to bring a head-lamp on my next ferry ride.)

Although the ferry ride was uneventful, Dad seemed to enjoy Haines a lot.  I had no idea what we would do there in the winter, but since we got lucky with the sunny weather, we drove up and down Alaska Highway every day.  We did it initially for the scenery (jagged snow-capped mountains all around) and eagles (it goes right through an eagle preserve), but we saw a moose on our first day so we just kept going back looking for more.  On our second day I blurted out that I wanted to see one crossing the road, and I wanted to see a bull moose (we saw a cow on the first day).  Probably not even 5 minutes later, we came up on a bull moose and a cow crossing the road!  I didn't bring my good camera so I didn't get great shots, but we were pretty stoked to see them.  We watched them for a bit and moved on.  On the last day, we though we had exhausted our luck with the moose, but on the way back we saw a cow and her calf crossing a river!  We again watched them for a bit before moving on.

Canadian border on Alaska Highway 7

One thing I did not realize was how close Haines was to the Canadian border (~44 miles).  Next time I'll have to bring a passport and health certificate for Millie so I can cross over.  I would like to do the Skagway-Whitehorse-Haines loop sometime.

Aside from the drive around, we did very little else.  The town itself was buried in about 3 feet of snow so we couldn't really find a good place to do much walking.  On the last day we did find a trail that supposedly goes to Chilkoot lake, but by then we had to go catch the ferry so we didn't go too far.  Probably better for poor Millie though, who now has a fractured elbow and is on forced rest. The view of the river along the trail is very nice though.  If I go back, I would like to see what is at the end of that trail.

The population of Haines is 1800 according to the 2000 census, but I wonder how many of them actually stick around for the winter.  There wasn't a whole lot going on.  We found only 3 restaurants in the whole town (one was near the Canadian border) and no stop lights.  While we got lucky with sunny weather, this could have easily turned into a disaster.  We could've been stuck hanging out in our motel for 3 days if weather was bad.  Definitely would recommend visiting in the summer for those who are coming from far away.