Haines Alaska
Trip Start
Aug 02, 1998
1
12
36
Trip End
Sep 06, 1998
Haines, Alaska, United States
Thursday, August 13, 1998
Destination: Haines Alaska
We had a good sleep last night; John wasn't too bad in the snoring department. We must have been pooped because we slept in until 8:00 a.m. today. The great thing about our Beaver Creek camp site was the showers were free, so we enjoyed nice long ones.
Today started out a little on the cool side, around 8 C. Bob even put on his long johns today. The riding again was fantastic as we headed back to Whitehorse through the Kluane National Park. This is a beautiful part of the Yukon, with great mountains and nice easy turns. On our way back we stopped at an old gas station where a helicopter was available for rent. We checked it out for cost and it turned out that we went on a one hour tour of the mountains with a German couple
Helicopter
. The cost was $150 each but the poor Germans paid $200 each. This was a great opportunity to see the glaciers and hover over the top of the mountains. Our tour guide / pilot was Bob, who was great at giving us some history lessons and did an excellent job.If John had his snow board he would have asked Bob to let him off to board down the mountains. The snow was virgin white, totally untouched. Our ride finished around 2:00 p.m. so we headed West to Haines Junction and then South on Hwy. #3 to Haines Alaska. Bob thought that he was going to run out of gas but was lucky enough to hit a gas station. and top up. The road going down to Haines was quite exciting, with part of this ride being a downhill ride of 18 km, quite steep but beautiful road surface and mountains on both sides of the road. Before getting into Haines we crossed the US border, where Bob needed to get more gas, as he was riding on reserve.
Haines is a cute little community that is totally surrounded by mountains. Our camp site, Eagle RV Park, was like a picture post card. After supper we walked to town to play tourist. This was probably the first real exercise that we had since we left Ottawa. We had to pick up some propane bottles as we were getting low and were surprised as the cost was higher here than in Canada. We paid $4.99 US per bottle, and it is $2.99 at Canadian Tire. - oh well!
John spotted an ice cream place, so we got our sweet fix and headed back to our camp site. After cleaning the dead bugs off our bikes we relaxed a little then called home to see how our families were.
After seeing what we have experienced, it sure would be nice to rent an RV and show our families this part of the country. Canada is something we should be proud of and everyone should have an opportunity to see what we have been experiencing.
