Aug 5 – Hiking around Haines

When I woke up early this morning I could hear rain on the roof. By the time I dragged myself out of the cozy and warm bed, it had stopped but the cloud cover was solid. We decided to do a shoreline hike as it seemed like climbing up a hill for a view would be pointless.

We selected the Seduction Point Trail in Chilkat State Park south of Haines. The entire trail is 7 miles one way and they say it should take 8-10 hours. We obviously only did a small section. It is actually kind of embarrassing, when you look at the map of the trail, how small a section we did.

We did A to B which is about a mile. The description said it should take about 45 minutes one way while we took 1:15. Oh well, slow and steady.

This section only took us from the trailhead to the shore through the forest. In our defense, it did go up and down along a hill side quite bit and there were lots of roots to step over. 

The first part was quite open.

Other sections were a lot more overgrown. There were some boards in the really wet spots.

It was a deep, dark forest as our daughter Lynn would say. We saw lots of shapes that looked like animals.

A bat,

A bear climbing a tree.

And then we did see a real animal. I heard a sound, looked over and there was a moose about 30 feet away. The picture is really bad  (shoulder and head from behind) because I was more worried about watching to see what it was going to do. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then it wandered off. Not a scary encounter at all. We had our bear bells out so it probably heard us long before we saw it.

There were a few interesting plants and a lot of different kinds of mushrooms.

It is a real rain forest so a lot of the board walks and bridges were getting a bit rotten. We had to be careful on each one.

We finally got out of the forest to the shore of Chilkat Inlet.

We went around a point to have lunch and stare at two glaciers across the water.

The rocks at the point were also very interesting. I think it was layered shale of some kind but the rocks had been pushed up enough that the layers were vertical.

It made for some interesting patterns. This one almost looked like a cityscape.

Being edge on, the rocks were very sharp and we had to really watch where we walked and sat.

In this one spot, it almost looked like they were rusting.

Jennie spent a long time wandering around collecting rocks. Her pack was a lot heavier for the return trip.

Some very cold looking people out fishing.

We continued on down the path along the shore for a while but it seemed to head inland for a while without any views.

So we headed back.

Back at the car we went to a viewing platform. There was a building with some volunteer hosts looking very bored. I don’t think they got many visitors on this kind of day. They were playing solitaire with REAL cards.

Jennie used the scope on the platform to get a closer look at one of the glaciers.

Our weather luck is holding again. Shortly after we got into the car it started to drizzle and it has not really stopped since.

Driving back home we saw this young eagle on a rock scanning for fish.

We also saw our first somewhat large cruise ship off in the distance. The Radisson Seven Seas Navigator.

Tomorrow some biggies from Royal Caribbean and Princess are due.

I am not sure what it was about this hike but it took a lot out of us. This is the first time my legs have felt a bit sore and when we got back to the RV we said we would have a short nap but fell asleep instantly and woke up 2 hours later.

It was a pretty good day considering what it looked like this morning.

They say a man with two clocks is never sure what time it is. I think the same thing goes for weather forecasts. The Weather Channel said “Sunny with partial clouds (20% chance of rain)”. Accuweather said “Cloudy with a passing shower (100% chance of rain)” and  the Weather Network said “Cloudy with showers (40% chance of rain)”. Over the summer they have been frequently wildly different. Only if they agree, will I use the information. Usually it is just get up, look and then decide what to do.

We are planning to be away from real campgrounds for the next few days so the posts will likely be delayed.