Day
45 – 6-25-15 Thursday After breakfast we drove about 19 miles back
up the Haines Highway to the Bald Eagle Preserve to hike the trail
along the river and look for Bald Eagles. This is the area where
between 3 and 4 thousand Bald Eagles come to in the Winter to feed
because the river in this area does not freeze and the eagles can
still feed on salmon on the river. Our info sheet stated that usually
350 or so of the eagles stay in the area all year. We walked the
trail along the river for over a mile and only saw one young eagle.
They don't get the white feathers on their head until after they are
4 years old and this eagle was still brown. It was a good 2 mile hike
with just a few mosquitoes. There were lots of wildflowers along the
walk and some of the tallest clover we have ever seen. It came up to
our knees. The wildflowers included fireweed, daises, clover,
dandelions and others that we did not know the name of. I called one
of them mouse whiskers because that is what it looked like.
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| Fireweed |
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| Cheap Hotel on the Haines Highway |
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| Fish Wheel used to monitor salmon population |
We
drove up the road a few more miles and turned off to the Thlinkit
Indian village of Klukwan. They had a nice looking medical building
and another large new structure which is probably a community
activities center. But the homes and yards were another story all
together. A series of junk vehicles, “stuff” sitting around
everywhere and very un-kept looking houses and yards. We left there
and headed back to Haines.
We
have noticed two places on either side of town where there is a
waterfall coming down the mountain and a metal pipe stuck in the
rocks at the bottom with water flowing through the pipe. We have
noticed people stopped at these two places filling up 5 gallon
containers so when we were headed back to town we pulled over at the
one on the Haines Highway and asked a man there that was filling up
his containers about the water. He said it was the best water around.
We asked him if it was safe to drink and he said yes and he had been
drinking it for 40 years. That was good enough for us. We got our
water cups from the Jeep and tasted the water. Good and very cold.
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| Good Cold Water |
You
might can guess where this is heading based on the problem with the
water in Haines having E. Coli in it and the need to boil the water
before consuming it. We carry a collapse-able 5 gallon water jug in
the motor home. So we returned to the campground, got the jug, a
large cooler, and 4 other water containers and returned to the
waterfall and filled them all up. I have a way to pump water from a
container into the holding tank. So we made two water runs and now we
have the fresh water holding tank 35% full and will not have to boil
water and we have good water to shower with. If they don't resolve
the town water problem before we leave we may make another water run.
Lena
walked back into town to check out Olerud's Market, the other grocery
store in town. Yes, she came back with another bag full of groceries
and said she liked Olerud's better than the IGA.
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| Haines Airport |
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| Our campsite with a nice view |
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