Alaska 2013, Day 51, Haines Day 2

Monday July 22, 2013

Cannery

Drove out Mud Bay road to Haines Packaging cannery.  They have a self guided tour and retail seafood counter.  They weren't processing any salmon but they were packing dungeness crabs.  They were banding them and putting them in 4x4x4 crates. I don't know if they were shipping them live or were going to cook them, they did have cookers. We bought 2 big dungeness crabs for $6/lb. (I had 4.66 lbs of crab). They were great!

Glacier Bay Flight

We wanted to do a sightseeing flight and looked into Misty Fjord out of Ketchikan.  Problem is Ketchikan is really exepensive and you have to book in advance because of the cruise traffic.  I really don't want to commit to an expensive flight only to go in the rain.  Haines doesn't have as many tourists so the operators here will do last minute bookings at a cheaper rate (60% of Ketchikan).  It starting clearing up this morning so Cheryl found a guy that flies out of the airport for 1 hour flights over Glacier Bay Park and had availability this afternoon. He had a 6 passenger Cessna with turf tires.  Directly over the mountains to the west of town, otherside of Chilkat river, starts Glacier Bay.  He flew up over the mountains, low between the peaks. There is an icefield up top and lots and lots of glaciers, a couple tide water glaciers. He flew low over the icefield and glaciers and rivers.  The pilot could turn tight circles and hug the mountains and cliffs, really impressive. From down in Haines you would have no idea what is up here. Totally worth it to fly up here. We saw some mountian goats up on the peaks. On the way back to the airstrip the pilot did a "float the kids"  manuveur the kids just loved, like a big roller coaster hill.  He pulls the plane up then dives quick, feels like the bottom drops out of the plane.

No bears in Chilkoot State Park tonight but saw a varied thrush (orange and black) and a mink.