Haines, AK

After staying one night in Tok (August 4th) we left and drove about 240 miles south on the Alaska Highway to Kluane Lake in the Yukon Territory. We stayed at the Cottonwood RV Park 16 miles south of Destruction Bay for three nights. Kluane Lake is about 45 miles long and the Alaska Highway follows right by the shore for a long way.

Here’s a picture of the lake taken from our campsite - what a view!



During the two days we were there we went “birding” several miles up and down the lake from our campground. We added two more birds to our “life list” - a Bohemian Waxwing and a Rough-legged Hawk. We checked out one of the Provincial Parks about 5 miles north of where we were staying. The soapberries are ripe and the bear warning signs were plentiful. We saw a big Grizzly off the side of the road, but he was too far in the underbrush to get any good pictures.

Click on picture to get full size


Friday (August 8th) we moved on another 200 miles to Haines, AK - yep, out of Canada and back into the USA again. Alaska is on Alaska Daylight Time and the Yukon Territory is on Pacific Daylight Time - we’ve changed our watches and clocks forward and backward so much that we’re not sure what time it is anymore.

The drive from Haines Junction, YT to Haines, AK goes through a section of British Columbia and the scenery is about the most spectacular we’ve seen. We thought Canadian Rockies were about tops, but we believe today was right up there. The highway climbed up into the tundra and then followed wide alpine valleys for miles with the tall snow-capped mountains on both sides with a few glaciers thrown in for good measure.







Haines is another one of these small Alaskan towns on an inlet from the Gulf of Alaska - in this case it is the Chilkoot Inlet. The inlet forks near the ferry terminal and Skagway is up the right-hand fork several miles and is reached by ferry in less than an hour - or you could take the highway back to Haines Junction, YT, go to Whitehorse, and then back down to Skagway - at least 300 miles.

Here’s a picture of Haines from down the road toward the ferry terminal.



Today we rode up past the ferry terminal about five miles along the left-hand fork of the inlet to Chilkoot Lake. The outflow from the lake is the Chilkoot River which feeds the Lutak Inlet, which in turn feeds the Chilkoot Inlet. We saw lots of birds - Pigeon Guillimots, Surf Scoters, Marbled Murrelets, several Bald Eagles, and lots of gulls.

At one point on the Chilkoot River they had a salmon fence set up with a small hole in the middle. A guy was sitting out on the fence with a clicker and was counting the Sockeye Salmon as they found the hole in the fence and made their way on up stream.



The area below the fence obviously had lots of salmon that hadn’t found the hole in the fence yet and there were lots of fishermen trying their luck. We didn’t see any fish being caught - maybe that’s why they call it “fishing” instead of “catching”.