Haines Junction YK to Haines AK

A chilly start this morning, 6C at 8am PDT, partly sunny. As we have often done this trip, we set out early (we lost an hour yesterday with the time change) and will cook a breakfast with our new eggs somewhere along the way.

We saw our first grizzly in the wild along the way, from far away though:

There is some very different country going from Haines Junction to Haines, beautiful and very wild. It feels like high elevation, but isn’t real high.

Since Haines Junction is in the Yukon and Haines is back in Alaska, we had to go through a US border crossing before we got to Haines. So much for our breakfast plans, as our recently-purchased eggs were seized at the border! 

Turns out the eggs came all the way from Ontario, which had some bird flu outbreaks recently. We found out later that if we had cooked the eggs (like hard boiled) they would not have been taken. 

The road from there down to Haines includes a drive along a river reserve area where eagles congregate in spring and late fall. We saw a few this day, but at the right time there can be hundreds through here.

Real good fish and chips feed in Haines at the Halibut shop. We split one plate, only partly because of the price. Then based on some online recommendations, we camped at Haines Hitchup. Pricy at $33, but nice with excellent facilities. 

Cath visited a local quilt shoppe for 4 fat quarters, then we headed out for a drive to a fish packing plant on the outskirts of Haines. Interesting place, you can watch the cleaning lines from outside through large windows. We got 2 kinds of smoked salmon for a treat, and a piece of halibut (and boy was that good!). 

On the way back we saw a moose and her large calf browsing at the roadside.

Then we went right on through to the Chilkoot State Park for the second time, and this time saw some bears. We watched a sow grizzly and her 2 cubs work their way down the shoreline, and right under the bridge we were on. 

Lots of people fish here, and bears too!

No zoom for this picture!

That felt up close and personal, as close as we’d want to get.

A different supper tonight, smoked king salmon (excellent), with crackers and beer, well balanced.

This was the second cg we’ve stayed where there was a sign in the ladies washroom (and in the men’s this time too!) to not dye your hair in the showers. The other cg was in Valdez, so maybe it’s a USA thing? It was a premium cg, spotless washrooms with high-quality fixtures, excellent clean laundry room, lovely gardens, and grass instead of the usual gravel.