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| Pink (humpback) Salmon after entering freshwater to spawn |
As I told you all in the last post, we have decided to stay in Haines for the winter. We didn't make the decision lightly or without a lot of thought and planning. Haines is not the kind of place where you can just change your mind in December and decide to drive out of here back to the lower 48 (that's what Alaskans call the rest of the country), especially if you are towing your house. After agonizing for weeks over all the options and consequences, the truth is, we really like this place and want to stay here for ??? We like it for what it doesn't have here almost as much as we like what it for what it does have here (if you know what I mean).
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| Fall colors starting to appear on the Chilkat River |
Winter should be quite an experience here and we are really looking forward to it. In the heart of winter, there will be 20 hours of darkness and the 4 hours of daylight will find the sun skirting along the mountaintops in a long sunrise/sunset. The weather here is much less harsh than most of Alaska, or even many states in the lower 48. The temperature rarely gets below zero but they typically get a lot of snow...as much as 200" some years. You can check out the historical weather averages at this link if you are curious:
http://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather.php3?s=136307&refer=&cityname=Haines-Alaska-United-States-of-America
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| Our winter home |
We might be crazy for wanting to stay through winter, however, we're not crazy enough to stay in the MLS through winter. One of the keys to staying here throughout winter is having a warm place to live. About a third of the local population doesn't stay and heads south so they either winterize their houses or they look for someone dumb enough to stay and house sit. That's where we come in, literally. We will be house sitting Ivanca's parents home. If you remember, her dad was one of the town's first doctors (he's retired now) and has lived here for over 40 years. Their house is in the middle of town overlooking the marina with an incredible view of the Lynn Canal through the windows in the living, dining and bedrooms. We feel very lucky to be staying in such a great house.
One of the other keys to living here in winter is having an income to pay your bills with. A lot of the businesses in town close for winter because of the weather or the lack of tourists - like the RV park. Our plan is for Lori to work while I stay warm and cozy watching the storms roll in from the living room and take care of the house chores. Sounds like a great plan to me. Actually, I am already working full time at my new job as a surveyor for one of the largest construction companies in south east Alaska. I will only have 2-6 weeks of work with them before they start shutting down for the winter but they have already asked me to start back up full time in March. The money is very good as they are planning to work 58 hours per week so it will do well for helping us through the winter.
Since we are going to stay, let me use the rest of this post to show you around Haines a little bit.
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| Pretty much the whole town of Haines |
B-----Lori's Work (Chilkat Restaurant and Bakery)
C-----Grocery Store (Howser's IGA)
D-----Haines School (K-12)
E-----Moose Tracks (Fast food, coffee & ice cream)
F-----Library
G-----Bank
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| Lori's new place of employment |
Let's start with Lori's new place of employment. The "Chilkat Restaraunt and Bakery" is one of only two places in town to sit down for breakfast and the only bakery. It's been owned by Mickey, a cute little Thai woman for the past 5 years. Her mother is the cook so for dinner they serve Thai food. Lori is learning how to bake bread, muffins, donuts and...mmmmm...cinnamon rolls. She starts work at 5am so they can open for breakfast at 7. She says the worst part so far is her morning commute. Not because its so early or there's traffic. It's because she rides her bike and it is dark and there are a LOT of bears, grizzly bears, around town. She has to park by the restaurant's dumpster and the bears have been into it 2 nights this week. On the good side...they close for most of December and January which will assure us of time to fly south for Christmas with family.
There are 2 grocery stores in town. We usually shop at Howsers IGA unless we also need some fishing supplies or outdoor clothing, then we go to the other store because they have all that and groceries. They both get all their stock delivered by the ferry once a week on the same day so you try to shop the day after to get the very expensive fruit and produce while it is fresh (well it's never really fresh). All the bread is shipped frozen so it is usually still thawing if you shop that day after ferry day. The selections are good and you can get most anything you can get in the lower 48, only 30% higher in price. Lori was going to work at the IGA but the 10% discount wasn't worth the chance of not having time off to come visit family for Christmas.
There is one school in town which serves all grades, K-12. There are about 350 kids that attend. They are known as...what else...the "Grizzlies". It is very fitting considering the number of brown bears in this area. A few days ago they had to keep the kids after school until the police arrived because a grizzly had been spotted on the ball field. The police report in last weeks local newspaper was almost all calls regarding bears including one where a homeowner had to shoot a bear that had tried to get into their home. We used to hear gunshots in Vegas all the time and knew it was a crime happening. We hear gunshots here a few times a week and know it is someone having a bear problem. Locals tell us that high school basketball games are very popular entertainment as there is no movie theater or bowling alley.
There are no chain franchises in Haines of any sort and only 2 "fast food places". Both places are made from some kind of 8'x20' trailers and both have drive-up windows where you actually order, pay and pickup your food from the same window. I'm not sure which one I like better. "Hog Heaven" has some decent sliders (sometimes) and "Moose Tracks" has good soft serve ice cream. Spaz likes Moose Tracks better because they give her a dog biscuit when she drives through...with us of course.
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| Haines Library |
Haines has a great public library with real paper books. They also have DVD's you can check out and watch and free classes you can join like wood carving. They also allow well behaved dogs (like Spaz) inside. We can also bring Spaz into the bank while we do our business, in fact, they encourage it and give her dog biscuits also. We also have the "Hammer Museum" (that's right, a hammer museum) with over 1,500 hammers in it one of which is said to have been used to build the pryamids of Egypt. I should have included a picture of the giant hammer in front of the old museum building...stay tuned...maybe next time.
The police and the fire department share the same building. There are 3 police officers-2 male and 1 female. The fire department is made up of all volunteers. They are called to duty by three blasts of the super loud horn, the same one that sounds the noon whistle everyday. Every summer, they host a $10 salmon dinner to help fund the station with salmon donated by the local commercial fishermen. This year they served 1,200 dinners which means almost everyone in town came.
That should pretty much give you an idea what Haines has and what it looks like. You may have also noticed what it doesn't have - freeways, traffic, stoplights, grafetti or smog. You may now also think we are really crazy or you may understand why we want to stay for a while.
Either way, hope you enjoyed your tour of Haines and winter...here we come !!
I seem to be challenged when it comes to posting to your blog. Keep up the posts and please be safe. I really love what you are doing.
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