Haines Harriers

Monday 16th June

What an absolutely stunning day in Haines Alaska and what better way to start the day than a run around town?  Seen on our run, town surrounde d by snow covered mountains, sunshine and bald eagles.  What a great day to be alive!

Breakfast at our B&B cereal, pancakes and sausage yum!

We pack up and plan to check out Haines completely as our ferry doesn't leave until 8:15pm.  We check out the Hammer Museum it was very interesting.  It'a amazing what they use hammers for.  Then we share halibut and chips for lunch with a side salad.  After lunch we ride out to the ferry terminal and validate our tickets and find out what to do, which lane to wait in etc. 

We ride out to Chilkoot Lake to try to see some bears.  Nooo we didn't see any!!  There is a weir out there where they catch salmon and sex them and then release them back into the river.  We watched for a while it was very interesting.  It was such a pleasant day we watched some fish jumping in the river and some eagles flying around.

Then we went back to town and got a cup of tea and a brownie sundae (wish I had taken a photo of it, was massive!) Then we bought sandwiches for later.  We hung around the food van for a while and sat enjoying our tea and the sun.  And then we rode out to the ferry terminal again to wait for the ferry.  There were several bikes lined up in different lines.  The ferry goes to several stops and Juneau (our stop) is the first one so we will be last one loaded.  We strike up a conversation with a guy who is in the process of moving from Anchorage to Sitka and is riding and travelling on the ferry.  His name is Rob Davis and he is a really nice guy.  He's riding a BMW and is very chatty.  While we are chatting to some guys from Seattle John pulls up to say goodbye they went on a flight out on the glaciers today and are heading to Scagway tomorrow.
We ride onto the ferry almost last and strap ourselves down.  We make our way up to the Purser's desk to get our room key.  We are only on the boat for 4 hours but we got a room so we can relax it will be 1am when we arrive.  Once we are settled we explore the ferry there is a restaurant, a cinema and a bar.  We have a beer in the bar and then go back to our room.  We end up falling asleep on the bedand wake at midnight in time to watch a bit of the scenery go past.  When we arrive in Juneau it's just after 1am we ride to our hotel.  Google maps fails us again, our instructions say to turn right so after riding in circles for a while we decide to try turning left and HUZZAH our hotel is right there LOL we park out the front of the office and the guy behind the counter comes scurrying out and says you need to move the bike there is a shuttle coming in with passengers soon.  So we have impeccable timing we just beat the shuttle to the check-in desk.  Once we are checked in we go back out to the bike and are about to move it closer to our room when the security guard on duty comes out and says "you need to move that bike to a designated parking spot"  OMG!!! these people need to get out more! I replied "yes that's just what we are doing!" it was 2am so I was using my inside voice of course!