May 26 Day 17

 

We awake at 7:30AM to full sun and blue skies.  There were some revelers around last night but not too bad.  It is a great Memorial weekend in Haines.  The town will clear out some today as the Canadians don’t have tomorrow off.  In fact they will lose an hour going home as they observe Pacific Time/Yukon Time and Alaska observes Alaska Time.  It’s a little confusing to keep track of these border differences.  We are old fashioned and lugging the home PC with us for blogging and paying bills.  A tablet would have been the way to go but we are slow to change.  Internet access is iffy at best.  A lot of campgrounds say they have it but sometimes only in theory.  In the more remote areas it is satellite and we are dependent on when the owner turns on and off their router.  Sometimes it is cable and just very slow.  We are just as likely to not have any access at all.  It’s okay, adventure vacation means not having everything like at home and shaking it up for new perspective.  Now to think of it we saw only few I phone/other at the fest and none walking around town on their cell phones etc.  What a shock.  They were actually talking to each other.  We have broken 4 pieces of the dish set the RV provided.  I have never seen Corelle ware shatter on impact as I have in this RV when it hits the floor.  At home our Corelle gets dropped on the wood and bounces around.  The floor seems relatively insulated with vinyl.  We think the cupboard door over the sink latch is not very tight.  The door swung open and dishes spilled out.  Corelle glass shards are deadly if they get into your skin, like razors.  So wherever we are when it happens we stop and do a thorough clean up.  Note to self:  no Corelle ware for us in a camper.  The RV owner recycles these dishes for years in his rentals maybe they are just old.  This Haines RV campground is basically a perfectly manicured lawn/parking lot with tables.  If you want the deep woods, a more primitive experience, you go to the state or national park.  We opt for water, electricity and sewer access.  There are options for cable TV hook-up but we never get it.  The TV stays off and we can barely get any radio stations.  We get some news through Internet and talking with people, what a concept.  The owners of the Hitch em Up campground obviously take pride in their place and are campers themselves.  This is a Good Sam approved campground.  They have hired retired people to work during the summer.  The new couple is from Texas.  The showers/restrooms are generous and clean as is the laundry room with lots of washing machines and driers that all work.   Doing laundry in a campground requires another manual and a plan.  Some small laundry projects are done in the RV sink.  They do not allow tent camping here, yet we have seen every kind of ‘camper’, people in vans and trailers so small they look like they are only big enough for a bed. Another hitch in RV campground is what people consider acceptable dress.  Almost anything can walk out of an RV first thing in the morning.  The things you see when you don’t have a gun.  Some think that as long as they have one piece of clothing on that is adequate. We use our blinds a lot in these close encounters of the half-dressed kind. We are mostly of the same age, it’s just not that interesting.  We thought about going to the Senior Citizen Center for the all you can eat waffle breakfast this morning but it is advertised as an antidote to beer blasting.  We will defer that experience although the call of waffles is tempting, served by clear eyed, bushy tailed seniors.  We’re heading to Kluane Park in the Yukon this morning and there will be no showers, flush toilets, potable water or Internet in the Congdon Creek Campground that we like.  So fill up water here before we leave.  Will have to get propane but service is not assured.  All fuels, sewer dumps and drinking water have to be planned.

        We stop at the Fireweed Restaurant to see if they have any to go items.  We have heard so much about it but we weren’t here long enough to try all the recommended spots.  It’s a funky old fishing type shack with a great deck overlooking the harbor.  They only pull Haines Brew.  No to go’s but at least we got to go inside and check it out.  We want to see Chilkoot River and Lake in the sun.  We drive out again and are not disappointed.  There are two workers at the weir looking at the small wild salmon.  The eagles greet us.  Oftentimes we hear them before we see them.  They have a high pitched screech and then look for the white golf ball head in the trees.  Haines is located just over the mountains from Glacier Bay on the Inside Passage.  We pass by the Tlingit Peace Rock once again, the place where they meet to settle differences and work out compromises.  I’m thinking our Congress could take a lesson from them.    We leave Haines via the Haines Hwy Rt 3 going north.  We follow the Chilkat River for several miles.  The Chilkat comes out of the Chilkat Glacier over 52 miles away in British Columbia.  It is high water and as a glacial river it braids its way through the valley.  We see blue Forget Me Nots bloomed on the rock faces blended with huge bunches of bright yellow dandelions.  At home they are weeds, here they are a welcome sight of bright color.  Blue and gold together, how Alaskan.  We enter a long stretch called the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, 48,000 acres.  In October until January more than 3000 eagles descend for the salmon runs.  You can bet there are lots of bears too. Most of the eagles in Alaska are in the southeast.  We spy some native fish wheels by the river.  This Chilkat Pass route is an old Tlingit trading route with the interior Athabaskan natives. John Dalton came and took it over to form the Dalton Trail leading to Dawson City for the gold rush; and history ensued. However, the Tlingits were very shrewd business people and pragmatists that made it work for them to a point.  Dalton is the third gold trail in the area, the others are White Pass and Chilkoot.   This ride is a feast for the eyes, the sun is full and the mountains are snowy.  We see the huge Saksaia glacier as well as the Jarvis Glacier (Pat’s maiden name).  We start climbing to the Chilkat Pass and come to Canadian Customs.  In a short drive we have passed into over the Canadian Border into BC from AK and lost an hour from Ak Time to Yukon Pacific Time.  The Canadian border guards are such happy campers. Bonjour!  Back to Km and Celcius, more math. Shortly we pass back into the Yukon.  We see Trumpeter Swans along the way.  These are young mountains with their sharp saw toothed peaks.  We see a couple blown out old volcano cones.  We enter the Chilkat Pass at 3200 plus feet.  It is snow covered and we are back to very early spring.  The Anchorage RV company dictates this schedule but coming in the spring does have many benefits.  You have the road almost to yourself and you witness the emerging spring.  Even though you must anticipate uneven open services, facilities and park programs.  And the bugs are still almost non-existent!  We see the put-in point for one of the premiere river water rafting locations.  People are biking the Pass, amazing.  There is no one living up here, it is completely wild except for road work stations.  A note about Al Can car dirt.  It is a badge of honor to collect enough dirt to be counted as a road warrior; a broken windshield is an uber honor.  It is tradition on the highway to have an RV wash at the end of the Alaska highway at Delta Junction but we aren’t going there so the dirt stays.

        We pass through a vast valley filled with huge aquamarine colored lakes that are still mostly frozen.  Mid point to Haines Junction we see the solid wall of mountains that form our western barrier.  There is a narrow trough, called the Duke Depression, between this mountain wall and the great coast mountains in the St. Elias/Wrangell range.  Just on the other side is Yakutat, Ak.  We sailed into their harbor two years ago on the ferry.  We have entered Kluane National Park Reserve. The mountain wall is impressive with only the rare valley opening between them.  This wall follows us to our campground.  This area was hit during the 90’s with spruce beetle and it devastated many of the trees.  Ak had the same thing happen.  We come to Kluane Lake, the largest in the Yukon, it has the Ruby Range on its eastern shore.  This lake had a strange natural event 400 years ago when the glacier that filled the valley shifted and changed the whole drainage system from Pacific Ocean to Bering Sea.  The scale of this land is so vast it is hard to get perspective.

        Kluane National Park Preserver along with Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Park, Alaska’s Glacier Bay and Wrangell-St Elias National Park have collectively been assigned a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site.  To see this area on the map shows the incredible miles and acres it encompasses.  This is the wild of the wild.  We arrive at Congdon Creek Campground within the Park.  We stayed here 2 years ago.  We are able to get our same camp spot, old number 9 with our own foot path to the lake’s edge.  There are no services so we are ‘dry’ camping using the battery, propane and generator.  It’s sunny, cool and breezy.  The lake is still mostly frozen.  Two years ago it was breaking up with large cracks developing.  That has not happened yet.  This area is a dry zone with only 9 inches of rain a year and it shows in the plants.  There is a bear warning when we pull in.  This time instead of warning tent campers they have prohibited tent camping.  Don’t know what happened but we will be mindful.  Don’t know what they are eating in this barren place except tent tacos.  We don’t see any sign of moose at all and no fish are in for a while or the soapberries aren’t ripe till August.

        Re: potable water.  By now we have picked up water for the RV tank over 3000 miles.  At this time we have a mix of the original Iowa water with whatever else.  It tastes pretty good and we haven’t gotten sick.  In the future a filter might be a good idea.  You never know.  We got really bad tasting water at Devil’s tower (didn’t make us sick) and ended up having to buy store water until we got it diluted with other water.  It’s just one of those things we take for granted at home. 

        Only hear the sound of the wind in the trees.  So different from Haines.  We cook some of our dinner on the open fire and take a walk along the beach and around the campground.  The ‘beach’ has the shores of a glacial lake, meaning some sand but mostly stone and rock.  It’s difficult to walk on it. It’s getting cool so closing up for the night.  Haven’t broken our record, we have an AK RV in the campground tonight.  We last saw this couple in the Badlands.  Quiet night tonight!

Nighty Night.

Miles traveled by RV 225 Miles

Total RV Mileage 3818

Total miles traveled 4748

Total RV travel time 8 hours