Alaska 2015 - Day 47 - Haines

Day 47 – 6-27-15 Saturday I don't think I have mentioned that the campground has mountain views looking in three directions from our camps site. Sometimes in the morning the clouds are hanging below the peaks of the mountains behind and to the left of us. The town of Haines is setting in a beautiful place. Not that we would but if we were to move to Alaska, Haines might be the place. We like it better than any place we have visited so far. We really like the area down the road by Portage Cove out to Chilkat Lake. The town is small and has lot of services.

View behind our site

Another view behind our site

View of Haines from road down by Portage Cove

This morning we went back to the city fairgrounds, that I mentioned yesterday, to the Haines Saturday Farmers Market. We bought a pint of Thistle Honey. I asked the vendor about the honey and how he kept bees in Alaska. The honey came from California. He has property in California and in the Haines area and he goes back and forth between the two areas. I told him we were not familiar with Thistle Honey. He said it was very good and if we didn't like it to bring it back and we could get our money back. It is good so we kept it. The honey we have seen in Alaska is very expensive. This was not too bad, $12 for a pint. Lena uses it every morning in our fresh juice so we go through quite a bit if it.

"Dawson City" movie set for White Fang

"Dawson City" movie set for White Fang

Then we went to Mountain Market to try their lattes and pastries. It is a popular place in town. We got a piece of blueberry sour cream coffee cake with the coffee. It was all good, not the best Latte we had ever had but still better than most we have tried in Alaska. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the TV program Gold Rush. I watch it. The young man (Parker) that is one of the gold miners on the program is from Haines and his family lives beside the Haines Highway coming into town. His father owns/runs a road building business. I recognized their home when we came by it. Anyway while we were drinking our coffee Parker's mother came in to get some coffee and join some friends. I asked her how Parker was doing.

After lunch we returned to the post office to pickup the package that was shipped from Alabama with the part I needed to fix the slide out. I had been tracking it and knew it came in this morning. The package forwarded from Valdez on Tuesday still has not arrived, yet the one we got today that came all the way from Alabama got here today and was shipped Tuesday. One lesson we have learned is to have any package shipped Priority Mail when you are traveling and need it to be at certain destination in a few days. We don't need the other item (it is a spare part) as bad as we needed this one that came today. So if it don't come by Monday morning when we leave here we will have it forwarded again to somewhere in the lower 48.

We left the post office and went to the ferry terminal and booked space for the Monday ferry to Skagway. For both of us, the motor home and the car, the cost was $225 for the one hour ferry trip. It will save us driving 200 miles over road we have already traveled and we know at least 5 miles is bumpy gravel and there are several places with frost heaves we will miss and we will travel 100 miles of road we have not traveled on. We had not planned to visit Skagway since we were there in 2007 on the Alaska cruise we took, but plans change.

After returning to the campground I installed the new slide control board and tested it. It works, so no more jumping the board to make the slide go in/out. I examined the bad board and I think I found the problem with it. It appears the solder joint to the power connection had come loose. So I may be able to fix it when we get home and have a spare control board if ever needed.

About 6:30PM we walked into town and down to the small boat harbor. Not much happening in Haines this evening, very quiet. The sky was clear today with a high of about 63 degrees. When the sun goes past the tree tops in the evening you need a jacket to set outside. I know family and friends in Eastern North Carolina would like to get some of these cooler temperatures since it has been in the upper 90's there this month.

One thing we have noticed on this trip is that Robins are a common bird everywhere apparently. There has not been many places we have stayed that we did not see robins. The sites in this campground are covered in nice plush grass and the robins are constantly hopping around catching worms in the grass.