June 30th to July 3rd - Skagway

June 30th - Sat - to Haines
More gorgeous scenery on the drive to Haines. Nicer road with not so many frost heaves. Then Dolly got a treat at the RV park which is totally grass - very nice place with full hookups including sewer. A lot of places in Alaska just have central dumps - I think the long, cold winters make it difficult to keep sewer hookups open.
Explored the town and drove out to Chilcoot Lake where people where fishing for salmon from the banks of the Chilcoot River. The landscape here is different from much of Alaska - large evergreens and very lush forests rather than the scrawny black & white spruce trees. And of course amazing mountains everywhere!

July 1st - Sun - Haines
Today we drove to Chilcat state park and saw Rainbow and Davidson glaciers. Then we finished touring the town although some stores where not open since it was Sunday. We went to the Alaska Bald Eagle Foundation Interpretive Center which had a wonderful display of animal mounts - mammals, birds and fish - and an interesting film on eagles. There is a huge bald eagle preserve just outside of Haines. The film had a lot of footage from there and included quite a bit of footage from the eagle preserve at Brackendale (Squamish), B.C.

July 2nd - Mon - to Skagway
We decided to take the ferry from Haines to Skagway rather than driving around. It is 14 miles by water and 350 miles by road. With diesel costing $3.50 a gallon here and $1.34 a liter in the Yukon, the cost of the ferry didn’t seem quite so bad.
We left the RV park in Haines at 10:30 as we had to check in 2 hours ahead of our 1:00 pm departure time. The ferry was an hour late leaving Haines for the 1 hour trip and we were almost the last rig off so it was 3:40 by the time we were driving to the RV park here. So basically the whole day was taken up for a 1 hour ferry trip.
When the ferry docked at Haines, we saw that cars exiting for Haines and cars getting on (us!) would be entering the ferry through a door on the side rather than the front or back like we have done previously. This means you have to turn around somehow inside the ferry and do some backing up! We were the longest rig taking the ferry (55 feet) so they pulled us out of line and had us board after 2 other rigs. We made a 90 degree turn in the ferry and drove all the way to the back where large loading doors were open. We figured we would be driving off that way at Skagway - but we figured wrong! The side door was used again so Terry had to back up the entire length of the ferry (past the loading doors) and make a 90 degree turn to drive off. There are 3 lanes in the middle of the ferry and the rigs on either side of us were still there when Terry had to back out - quite a challenge.
We did not have a reservation at the RV park here as it was full when I called earlier. The guy said to just show up and “something would break loose”! Larry & Barb had a reservation here so they reminded the guy all morning that we were coming and wanted a spot. So we did get a space when we arrived.

July 3rd - Tues - Skagway
We chatted with neighbors this morning before heading to town with Larry & Barb. It was a gorgeous sunny day, just right for wandering around. We figure 80% of the shops in Skagway are jewelry stores. They are catering to the cruise ship passengers. There were 4 cruise ships here when we arrived, all due to leave tonight. We came back to the RV park for a rest and dinner so we could take in some evening activities for the 4th of July holiday.
There was a street dance starting at 9. The band was not playing music that appealed much to us but it was fun watching kids “dancing” and just watching people. Fireworks were supposed to start at 11, actually started at 11:25 but were worth the wait. It was a very good show with some fireworks set off from a boat and others from the end of the cruise ship dock.