Alaska

I was not aware of it, but Beer Fest was happening in town that weekend. Too bad, since I had other plans. I can always get trashed on my own time, I say, and I did not come to Haines to fight a hangover. By the way, this was happening on the set of White Fang, mentioned in part 1.

The first thing I did was rent a bicycle, to take it out onto Haines Highway. As the town of Haines itself, the highway is one of the most beautiful roads in Alaska, although I would guess most of the roads in Alaska are that way. Some actually choose as their cycling adventure a multi-day trip via Canada, from Haines to Skagway.

There is some Canadian TV programming in Haines, with Canadian and U.S. coins freely accepted at the same time.

Since I have not ridden a bike in well over 10 years, I didn’t push it this time all the way to Canada, although “real” cyclists can cover that distance for fun and not even notice it. I am sure I could have gone further, but my casual riding style sent my butt into intense pain. The bike and I just weren’t made for each other. My real goal was the Bald Eagle Preserve, but I fell far short of it, having to turn around before I couldn’t sit anymore.

And the road was, as expected, beautiful. There is almost no traffic, and there must be only a few roads in the world that are so scenic and almost desolate.

This is the heaven cyclists go to when they die.

I spent a fair amount of time just chilling in the town itself. If you can call 75 degrees “chilling”. Someone actually complained that it was “almost too hot”.

There a few things in particular that struck me about the town:

* Haines appears to have a much bigger slice of 20-somethings, compared to Juneau, sort of contributing to the idea that the young and the hip don’t dig places with no roads out.

* Even though the place is not a cruise ship port (a good thing), there are multiple public restrooms built throughout the town, which is obviously very convenient.

* Prices, OMG. The only cab in town will charge $20 to drive you 4 miles to the ferry terminal. A medium-sized bag of chips can cost as much as $5. And this is not even the edge of existence.

The travel back “home” seemed much shorter, now that I knew my way around the Malaspina. I parked on one of the lower decks, having the place pretty much all to myself for over an hour:

I was gooed in sunblock this time, so I could spend a lot more time outside watching for wildlife and scenery shots.

An interesting thing that the ferry system does is host a forest service representative on board. Keep in mind this is not a narrated sight-seeing tour but a means of transit. Nevertheless, you can still sit in on Southeast Alaska trivia sessions and learn that bears are not true hibernators. Dang it! Just when I was about to find one and pull on its tail!

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