Day 91 - Million Dollar Falls to Haines, AK

Back To The Coast In Our Search For Bears 

After our night at Million Dollar Falls, we were off to Haines, AK. The drive took us up into a tundra valley between two mountain ranges. It must have been a glacial-carved valley as the terrain was all rounded upand over the ridges. It was quite impressive with open tundra pocked with lots of ponds.

Then we got to the mountains east of Haines and stated down...right into pea soup fog. Once again, it was quite wet on the coastal side of the mountains.

We arrived on the outskirts of town in late morning, just in time to catch the weekly farmers market at the fairgrounds. It wasn't a large market, but obviouly a local favorite. There were several small vegetable tables and they were selling out quickly. Ellen picked up a few fresh veggies. We also had coffee from a local roaster and bought a loaf of fresh multi-grain bread from a small baker (I also got a fresh bagel with cream cheese).

It was then off to town where Ellen and Sally finally found a place to get their hair cuts. Meanwhile Harry and I went off to wash the vans. They had gotten incredibly muddy over the last couple of days with the rain and road construction.  We had seen a self-serve car wash on the way into town. It took many quarters, but eventually Speedy was mostly mud free.

We went back to town...maybe four blocks, picked up Ellen and Sally and stopped at the Bamboo Room for lunch. It was supposed to have the best fish and chips in town and it was quite good, albeit a bit expensive.

There were a couple of choices as to where to spend the night, none very near town. We decided on Chilkoot Lake State Recreation Site. It was about eight miles out of town at the end of the Chilkoot River. The short river from the ocean inlet to the lake is a salmon river and was known to attract Brown Bears. About midway to the lake was a fish weir that the state built in order to count the salmon going upstream. This area was supposed to be a favorite hangout for the bears. It was also a favorite hangout for fishermen and we saw quite a few on our way into the campground...fishermen, not bears.

We arrived fairly late in the afternoon and it was a Saturday. We didn't expect that it would be as crowded as it was and were lucky to find two of the last sites available.

After getting the Roadtreks parked and leveled, Sally, Ellen and I walked up to the weir, just to see how long it would take. We got there at about the same time as the bears. They were on the other side of the weir and there were several rangers about.  About 20 yards from the weir was as far as we could go, so we had rather far away looks as the bears wandered downstream towards the inlet.

A pretty good end to a damp day.