Winter...here we come !!

Tuesday, September 6th

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).

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

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.



Pretty much the whole town of Haines

                                              A-----Our House for Winter (103 Dalton St.)
                                              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

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.

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 !!

Summer Bummer

Wednesday, August 31st

BUMMER…the end of summer has come! I know it happens every year but this year was different…is different. This end of summer brings with it the end of our job at the Haines Hitch Up RV Park which is what brought us to this part of Alaska and this beautiful little city.

We have loved every minute we have spent here – day and night, rain and sunshine, fishing and hiking, working and…ok, well work is work and can you really love it? We did enjoy the job and doing something so different - no worries, no responsibility, no liability – just mowing and cleaning.

As much as we have enjoyed all the wild beauty of nature this summer, we have enjoyed all the people we have met almost as much. People here seem to be so different from Vegas – they dress differently, they think differently, they do different things and they have such different lives.

Some of them have become our new good friends, like Patrick and Ivanca. Patrick was a state fish and game trooper until an on the job accident involving an ATV crushed his pelvis and forced him into an early retirement. Patrick is all Alaskan. He grew up in the Alaskan wilderness near Dawson City on the Yukon river. Their house had no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. His father was a trapper and and his mother sewed the family parkas from the hides of bears, wolves and caribou. Patrick ran his own trap line by the time he was 9 years old along with his other daily chores such as hauling water from the creek to the house and taking care of the family’s dog sled team. His parents still live there and Patrick goes back every year at this time to hunt moose. He says you are welcome to fly into their cabin anytime using these coordinates in Google Earth:          64°55'22.03"N          141°17'55.75"W

Ivanca is his wife. She is a tiny ball of fire from Bulgaria. Her parents are long time  Haines residents (over 40 years) and her father was one of the towns first doctors. They adopted Ivanca from an orphanage in Bulgaria when she was 9 years old which started a trend that lead to 9 different orphans being adopted by others families in this tiny little town of 1,300 people. She has a dog grooming business and when she is not walking dogs for miles, she is running miles and miles all over town. She has also become quite a hunter and last year shot a grizzly that weighed 5 times what she weighs.

Marteen is another one of the orphans adopted from Bulgaria. His parents are very successful artist hippies that live in a home 8 miles from town with no indoor toilet, just an outhouse. His dad seems to be a true old school hippie from the 60’s. He studied physics at Berkley before he left for a voluntary apprenticeship crafting guitars by hand. He now makes a living painting and creating these beautiful custom guitars using no power tools. Please check out his work and read about these guitars at these links:

http://robgoldberghandmadeguitars.com/

http://www.artstudioalaska.com/

Some of them are just very unique characters we have gotten to know like Sally. We first saw Sally as we waited to catch the ferry in Skagway before we ever even got to Haines. We were waiting to board when this old 1970’s POS (piece of s#$t) Ford pick up parked next to us with this ancient looking, weathered old lady driving. We thought “now that is an Alaskan woman with some stories to tell”. Come to find out, she is the winter caretaker for the Hitch Up and…she does have some stories to tell. She must be about 80 years old and lives 26 miles out of town, alone, in a cabin that is half underground. She sells and hauls firewood by the cord in the bed of that old POS. She was married before although no one is sure what happened to her husband. She had a daughter and some grandchildren that met with tragedy some years back. Her daughter and grandchildren were with a friend out along the Chilkat River in winter when the ice gave way plunging her young grandson and friend into the swift, freezing cold river. Her daughter left her baby ashore and jumped in to save the others. She saved her friend and her baby but sadly, Sally’s daughter and young grandson drown.

If you really want to get a good glimpse into life in this small, remote little town there is an excellent book I can recommend. It was written by a long time resident and the book gained national fame. The title is “If you lived here, I’d know your name” (news from small town Alaska) by “Heather Lende” in 2005. Here is a link to check it out on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=If+you+lived+here%2C+I%92d+know+your+name&x=12&y=25

It’s really a bunch of short stories about life and death. It’s strange, this beautiful area seems to create lots of tragedies because it is a dangerous place to live. There are not many miles of highway for such a huge state so air travel by small planes in very unpredictable weather is common. It seems most everyone knows someone who has died in a plane crash. There is also lots of travel and fishing on the some of the most dangerous waters in the world that result in tragedy. Here, it seems like highway travel (even with a 5^th wheel) is the safest way to get around.

Speaking of safe, we seem to have downloaded a virus into Lori's laptop. It deleted all the pictures we have taken since we left, however, our son says he can retrieve them if we don't use it until we send him the laptop. Hers was the good computer that I did the blog on and mine is the old, slow POS and that explains why it has been a month since the last post...not cause we got eaten by a bear and made into a new book chapter. With his skill and the US postal service, we should have it and our photos back soon.

PS...We have also decided to stay the winter in Haines and we will tell you all about that in the next post.

Love...A Fair

Sunday, July 31st

I have to admit...I didn't come up with that cute title. It was the theme title for the "SE Alaska State Fair" (Alaska is such a big state it needs more than one fair) that was held on July 28-31 here in Haines. I thought it was such a great title because after all, who doesn't "love a fair" ? We had a season record of 75 sites filled at the Hitch Up with many people coming in from Juneau and Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory (apparently, lots of Canadians love a fair also). Lori and I had to work (sucks) on the fairs best day, Saturday, when they had the lumberjack contest and the fisherman's contest but we had Friday off to spend there.

.357 String Band rocking the fair playing "streetgrass" (all strings-no drums)

There was still a lot of great entertainment going on all day Friday.

They had some fun bands playing foot stomping bluegrass type music and a singer/songwriter contest. There was also this fire juggling/stilt-walking act straight from the "Burning man festival". Of course there was plenty of crappy fair food which we could not resist and consumed way too much of.

There was the usual state fair exhibits and contests - you know - the livestock and arts and crafts contests with their winning ribbons on display. Some of the best entertainment was the people watching. There are basically 2 types of Alaskans in Haines-the sourdoughs (hardy old timers) and the hippies (new age tree huggers). The fashions at the fair identified each type easily as you might notice in these photos (note the "Xtra tuff" boots on the one girl while the other is barefoot). The cool thing is they seem to co-exist here in the wild.  

Of course there was even the ride section to stir up all the crappy fair food in the little kids and make them want to barf.

Of course the fair was not very big. You could walk through the entire fair grounds and see everything in less than an hour (and that's being generous).

There was some very talented musicians which turned out to be the highlight of the fair for us. Some had great names like "Sasquatch Prom Date".

Some, like the one-man-band "Claude Hay" (seen in the video below) came all the way from Australia.

 One of the crowd favorites, and ours, was a 2 man band called "Hillstomp". They ended the Friday night fair by getting the whole place dancing and foot stomping (OK, the beer garden might have played a part) with their high energy Bluegrass. Check out their drum set in the photo below and you will see 5 gallon bucket drums and BBQ lid symbols. We had looked forward to the fair since the day we knew we were coming to Haines. It turned out to be everything we expected and less, and we had a great time because...

...everyone "loves a fair".

"Hillstomp" got the fair dancing with their hillbilly stomping bluegrass

Camping and fishing and BEARS...oh my !!

Friday, July 22nd

Our work week ended with some interesting developments. We had our highest number of campers for this season...53 (we have 92 sites) and Lori had the highest "one transaction gift shop sales" for the month of $236. If that stays tops until months end she will get a $25 bonus of "gift shop bucks" to spend wildly as she pleases and we will have to call her "Sales Queen butt kisser". 

Lori, Spaz and John Deer "bringing home the bacon"

 Also, Lori went grocery shopping !!

I know it doesn't sound like much but this was special. Fred (our boss) went to Juneau on the ferry for supplies so Lori was able to put in an order from Costco. Groceries here are very expensive so when you can stock up, you do it. The only trouble...when you order from a catalog, you don't see the size of your order and if you live in a trailer, storage is limited and the freezer is small. So even though it took the John Deer and trailer to haul it, she did manage to cram it all in the MLS thus avoiding hearing "I told you so" from me for the next 2 months.

Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Juneau

Fishing at the Chilkoot river is getting more exciting by the day. There are more salmon running up the river to spawn (there were over 1,200 counted at the weir yesterday) which makes for more exciting fishing. It also means that more bears are coming to fish which REALLY makes it more exciting.

Speedy and one of her cubs

The bears are always fun to watch, it never gets old. There are 2 sets - a sow with 2 cubs and a sow with 3 cubs - that seem to frequent the river this time of year and come and go daily. Both sets of cubs appear to be about 2 years old. Both sows have been in this area for some years, are fitted with some type of collar for research and have been given names by the locals; "BMJ" (Big Mama Jama) and "Speedy".

While you are fishing, you really have to stay alert with one eye on your pole and one eye watching for bears. They come down the hill from the forest behind you so you have to pay attention to where you are fishing and make sure you have room to vacate your spot if the "owners" come to fish there.

 

 

The bears seem to be used to having to share the river and fish with the 2 legged fishermen. They get curious and quite close sometimes but I have heard no stories about anyone being attacked. However, we have all heard about mama grizzlies (Sarah told us) and how they protect their cubs, so only a fool would get too close. I have heard lots of stories about guys crapping in their waders and losing their catch to the bears when they fling the fish to the bears in acts of self preservation or run leaving their stringers behind. None of those stories involve me but I have had to abandon my spot every day this week while they pass through. 

This is one of the Humpback (Pink) salmon I caught. They are one of the smallest members of the salmon family and some people (not me) don't like to eat them. This is how they look when they first enter the fresh water from the ocean. As they travel up river they begin to change; the males will develop large humps on their backs (hence the name) turn splotchy red and their mouths will become hook-jawed. After cleaning this female, I kept her eggs which are all stuck together in 2 separate membranes for use as bait in the lake later. The Dolly Varden go crazy for the eggs and when I fish with them, the hook barely hits the water before I start getting bites. It's tricky to get the eggs to stay on the hook but they sure do work well and we caught 4 delicious trout in less than an hour.

We decided to try camping again, this time out at Chilkoot Lake State Park. I made sure Lori did not forget the sleeping bags this time. We picked a great site right next to the lake and set up camp.

Lori did forget to bring any side dishes to go with fish or maybe she just did not have any faith in my fishing prowess. Either way, we went with the original plan for dinner, besides, what could be better than spaghetti, cold beer and a great view from your table ?!? Spaz kept us safe from the ferocious chipmunk who came into camp when he smelled our dinner being cooked by chasing him up a tree where he yelled  at us for the next half hour. The ranger came by and reminded us not to leave any food, ice chests or stoves out because of the bears and Lori slept with her can of bear spray. Luckily, we did not have any problems from them or the chipmunks during the night.

 We were treated to a beautiful sunset around 11pm and a very peaceful night on the lake. It is really wonderful to have such a nice spot so nearby to be able to "get away from it all" and enjoy...

Camping and fishing and bears...Oh my !!

Hooray for weekends !!

Sunday, June 17th

All of our blog posts lately seem to center around our weekends and this one is no different. After all, when you have to work for a living, you live for the weekends no matter where you are.

Our jobs are great and we are enjoying working at such different jobs. However, they are jobs and basically, all jobs suck.

Lori is a bit disappointed because she doesn't get to work outside in the flower gardens all day like she wants while the weather has been so nice.

I am disappointed because it hasn't rained much at all (1/4" in the past 8 weeks) so the grass won't grow and therefore, I don't get to drive the John Deer mower as much as I wanted to.

Spaz is disappointed because she has to stay inside the MLS while we are at work.

It's also funny how some things are the same. No matter where you are, there will be some A-holes.

A-holes in the RV park - Fred has had to "call the police" when some guy tells him he doesn't have to follow the rules, he'll do what he wants and nobody will tell him what to do (except his wife apparently).

A-holes with road rage in town - who flipped us off and called us "stupid morons", apparently cause we were riding our bikes on the wrong side of the street in the sooo busy downtown.

A-hole grizzly bears - cruising the RV park at night looking for free food, leaving crap piles we have to clean up. One tried to break into the state troopers mobile home which is next door to the Hitch Up.

So we decided we needed to "get away from it all" and go camping. We headed out the Haines Highway to mile 26 where we turned off, drove 3 miles and came to "Mosquito Lake". There are only 4 campsites on the shore and we were the only people around this calm, peaceful lake. The only sounds were the fish jumping and calling my name (mocking me I'm sure).




We launched the 2 man kayak and took turns paddling around because we are too afraid it will sink if we both managed to somehow get into it. Even Spaz is too scared to get in with one of us and is happy to watch from shore.

 We didn't seem to do a very good job of packing for our overnight trip. After gathering some firewood and starting a fire, we thought we should set up the tent when we realized that Lori forgot the sleeping bags (of course it was Lori, what did you expect, I write the blog). We decided if we tried to stay the night anyway we would die, so instead, we decided to make dinner and enjoy the evening before driving home.

That's when we found out she also forgot the spatula and the can opener. We knew we wouldn't die without those items and Lori improvised by using my trusty Swiss Army knife to open the can and then whittle a spatula out of a stick (she is becoming an Alaskan). She saved the dinner but could not find any big game to kill and make sleeping bags with (guess she still has a way to go since most Alaskan women can). Dinner was great and we also found that the lake had an appropriate name.




We still had a great time, beautiful scenery, peace and quiet, fishing and no A-holes. I only caught one fish, a nice 13" Cut Throat trout that we didn't eat for dinner because it wasn't big enough to keep. In this lake they need to be over 14" but less than 24" to be keepers.

We headed home about 10 pm and just a mile from town we came upon a couple of moose on the side of the road. There was a big bull and his cow who didn't seem to mind us getting close by in the truck. It wasn't until I rolled the window down and Spaz barked at them that they went into the bushes. Not sure what she thought of them, she has never barked at other animals (except cats) and has seen horses, cows, elk, bears, etc. She acts like a big tough Alaska dog from safely inside the truck.

This was the beautiful sunset we stopped to enjoy as we headed back into town. That is the Klehini river just above it's confluence with the Chilkat river. It is in this valley that the famed Jack Dalton pioneered the Dalton trail that many gold seekers took to the Klondike gold fields. He was one of the most famous of Alaskan pioneers, to learn more about him http://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/dalton.php 

Hunter - Gatherers

Saturday, July 9th

Moon rise at about 10 pm

This is how our week ended and our weekend began.

We got off work at 9:30 pm, changed clothes and headed "out the highway" to mile 19. We went to meet up with our old Vegas neighbors Jason, Christy and their family who were fishing on the Chilkat river for salmon using gill nets. Residents of  Alaska can get "subsistence" fishing permits which allow them to harvest many fish each year by this method. When the salmon start "running" up the rivers to spawn, they no longer feed and gill netting them is the best way to catch them.

When we found them along the river bank, the net was already in the water and they had already pulled in 12 nice sockeye (red) salmon. The net is about 25 feet long, 4 feet tall and is set from the river bank, usually in a back current where the fish will swim into it while resting. They planned to leave the net soaking overnight in the river and camp on the river bank. Lori and I planned to "camp" all cozy back in the MLS and come back out in the morning to help haul the net and clean the fish...I mean...I would help clean the fish while Lori played with the kids and dog.

Wesley "the wild man" showing off the nights catch

Sunday, July 10th

Back out in the morning to mile 19 and the fish camp. We brought out the coleman stove and Jason cooked up some great breakfast burritos with potatoes, egg (yuck) and bacon (mmm...bacon). We hauled the net again and plucked another dozen sockeyes out.

!! Super Scary Alert !!

We almost lost Spaz today !!

While we were cleaning the fish, Wesley and Kayla were throwing sticks into the very cold and fast moving Chilkat river. Spaz saw them throw something and did what Spaz does...goes to fetch it. She ran into the river and quickly found herself being swept down stream while she dog paddled for her life. I ran down the bank about 20 feet, laid stretched out over the bank while Jason held my feet and I grabbed Spaz by the hair on her back as she swept by - eyes HUGE with fear - legs paddling furiously. This dangerous stretch of river has claimed 5 lives in the past 3 years...but not this lucky dog.

Jason and I mending the torn net

The thrashing salmon ripped the net beyond our field fixing capability which ended our fishing day. However, I know Jason will be back before the salmon are gone by the end of September. There are 4 main salmon types, each run at different times and each have harvest limits. Something like:

     20 King salmon

     50 Sockeye (red) salmon

     80 Pink (humpy) salmon

     30 Coho (silver) salmon

That's a LOT of good free eating that can really help offset the high price of groceries in Alaska.

Kayla snapped this nice shot of a woodpecker that was hanging around the fish camp with his mate. The males have this bright red head and are about 6-8" tall. Bird watching up here is very entertaining and there are lots of them to watch. Bald eagles are very common and we see them everywhere. Ravens are also very common and VERY annoying - but smart. They make a lot of noise, especially early in the morning on your roof. They also can mimic sounds and we have heard them making cat sounds to torment Spaz when she is laying around outside. 

Since we could not gill net any more, Jason asked if we wanted to go back to town, get his boat and cruise out to Strawberry Island. The island is about a mile out into the bay and was rumored to be overflowing with wild strawberries that no one would have gone out to pick. Who could resist that chance...YUMMM!

Lori and her berry bucket on the hunt

If you have Google Earth and want to fly there and check it out, the Lat/Long for Strawberry Island:

                                     Lat. = 59.144830°      Long. = -135.396299

If you don't have it, you can see on this image where we are talking about. You can see that Haines sits on a peninsula with the Chilkat river inlet on the left and the Chilkoot river inlet on the right. You can aslo see the Davidson Glacier in the lower left corner.

We did not have much success finding strawberries, but we did have a good time. The weather was great, seas were calm and we had a picnic lunch with us. We found wild strawberry plants everywhere, however, they all had dried up flower buds where berries should have been. We have had an unusually dry summer up here (less than a 1/2" rain so far when normal is 5-7") which may be why there were no berries to pick. The tide ranges 25' or more this time of year so you always need to be aware of it when you are on the water or even fishing.

 

On the way home we stopped to get some bottled spring water...rather...we stopped to bottle some spring water. Alongside the highway is a natural spring that has been tapped with 2 small pipes sticking out from it. The water flows constantly with cool, pure spring water and the best part...it's FREE. Considering a case of bottled water from the grocery store is around $10 and this is even better tasting, we have saved a case worth of bottles that we fill ourselves...I'm trying to think of how to get it to market so we can make some money on it but I don't think mail order or internet sales is practical. Think about that next time you buy a bottle of water...it might have come from some dude filling them out of a piped spring somewhere.