I finally felt a bit better this morning. We arrived very early in Haines, but we did not get going and off the ship until around ten.
Haines is much less touristy than most of our stops have been. Skagway is only a short ferry ride away, but while Skagway feels clearly like tourism is the main business, Haines feels much more like a small fishing village where a cruise ship docks a couple times a week. Skagway had three ships while we visited, and sometimes has up to five.
My impression is that the cruise dock connects to what used to be the “sleepy” side of Haines. We visited a few shops that seem to have sprung up within people’s homes, or converted from homes anyway, and found some nice T-shirts in one, and some smoked salmon, spruce-tip salt, and spruce-tip jelly in another. Then we visited the workshop supplying carvings to the shop where we bought the shirts and talked to the artist.
The town is surrounded by tall, jagged peaks on one side and the deep waters of the fjord on the other, looking across at more mountains. Some of the peaks are so jagged that they almost look fake. The sun shone and it was warm and muggy.
The U.S. decided to build an army post when all the activity of the Yukon Gold Rush occurred, and this was the site they placed it. Several of the officer’s quarters and some other buildings remain, now being operated as B&B’s or homes.
Then we wandered over to the downtown area and looked in a couple shops there. The artist we spoke to seems to be dominating the local market, as we found two other places stocking his work.
We returned to the ship to have some lunch, then boarded a small boat with about two dozen other people for our journey to Davidson Glacier. We passed some amazing scenery on the way.
The ship’s captain was a young lady from Juneau, one of the few year-round Alaskan residents we have met. The boat landed us on the beach after giving us a good view of the glacier.
There we had a little snack, then we took a short and bumpy bus ride to some shacks and geared up with life vests and gumboots, then we hiked another quarter mile to a river of brown water emanating from the glacier. There we boarded some large canoes that had little motors on the back.
The amount of water coming out of this glacier was incredible, a substantial river of milk-shake brown water.
My wife went to the illusionist show on board that night, but I was worn out and went to bed early.