Day 92 - Haines

More Bears And A Trip To Town

It rained overnight, but we were up early to view bears. This time we took Speedy. Not only did we want to have some steel between us and any bears, we were on our way back into Haines for the day.

We didn't find bear at the weir as we hoped, but on our way out decided to turn up a spur road that went over the river, just to see where it went. It went along a beach at the end of the Lutak Inlet...where we saw the bears. They were a pair of young brown bears on the beach just poking around along the shoreline. They were sharing the shore with Bald Eagles, which seemed to be everywhere, sitting on driftwood and on sandbars. Eventually, the bears walked up the beach and ended up crossing the road right behind us before disappearing into the woods.

We drove back along the inlet, past the ferry terminal and into town to find that much was much closed on Sunday. There were several local museums that we wanted to visit but most were closed. We decided to leave our museum visiting for tomorrow. We did drive up to the Fort Seward neighborhood. This is an area that was originally an Army post. When the Army deactivated it, a group of veterans decided to buy it and develop it into a town, called Port Chilkoot. Of the 50 who started, only about five families stuck it out, but eventually survived to become a neighborhood of Haines, renamed Fort Seward, and boasting a large number of restored homes and businesses.

With a quick stop at the Mountain Market for lunch of mediocre savory pastries, but good coffee, we spent much of the afternoon at the Haines Library uploading, downloading and updating software using their high speed Internet connection. I managed to complete most, but not all, of our pending Speedy Journal entries and the unfinished ones continue to grow.

After the library we drove out to the other state park at Chilkat Inlet...not to be confused with Chilkoot Lake. We found lots of space available, but the park was very dark and wet, even more rain forest-like than Chilkoot Lake, so we went back to Chilkoot Lake campground and took the last two available sites, one of which was the same site we had last night. I guess we will be here a while. Our ferry reservations aren't until the 23rd.