Saturday, July 12


On Saturday morning we headed for the farmers' market at the Southeast Alaska State fairgrounds, missing the actual fair by a week . We didn't find much in the way of vegetables, but we did find a street with a bunch of buildings that looked rather like Skagway and discovered that this was indeed a movie set, left over from Walt Disney's "White Fang."


We spent most of the afternoon at the Sheldon Museum, a gem of a place whose collection was mainly assembled by long-time citizens Steve and Bess Sheldon. One level consists of Tlingit art, while the other outlines the history of Haines. We learned more about this community not only from the exhibits but also from conversations with two long-time residents who work there. There are many artists living and working in Haines, and we bought a beautiful small birch salad bowl made by one of them -- art we can use in our daily life to help us remember this wonderful trip.


The Haines area is home to the largest population of bald eagles in North America, supported by a 48,000-acre preserve around the Chilkat River, which does not freeze in winter, and celebrated by an interpretive center in the town, our next stop. This inspired us to sign up for a raft trip on the Chilkat River the next day and then to drive to Chilkat State Park. There we found a lookout over Chilkat inlet, where the genial campground host spotted mountain goats for us with a telescope, and there we saw our first eagle. We could see two glaciers across the inlet, fed by one of the icefields that feed Glacier Bay, on the other side of the Chilkat mountain range. We visited Glacier Bay on our previous trip to Alaska, in 2004, so we won't go there this time. At the end of the day we had dinner by the boat harbor.