Haines Highway and Beyond

Monday we woke up rather early, like 5ish with no alarm. The highway was really quiet from 9pm until about 6am. The springtime brightness up here is really throwing us off.  The morning view was just as good as the previous night.  The inlet was full of seals/sea lions and birds again. The resident whales did not cooperate.  

We rolled into town rather early and Monday morning is just as quiet as Sunday.  We had a quick breakfast at The Rusty Compass and found out where all the men in town meet for coffee.  The biscuits and gravy were pretty good.  After breakfast we rolled north up the Haines Highway.  There are a few rough spots along the way and it is just as beautiful as the road down to Skagway.  The locals are correct, this is The Golden Circle.  

We made it to our Canadian border crossing at the 40 mile mark.  The road was quiet and the Canadian agent came out to chat.  I shut the truck off and he asked me to roll the back window down too.  Duncan loves everyone, Maggie didn’t like the stranger in black looking in her window.  He kept telling her to shush…I didn’t have to heart to tell him it wasn’t going to work.  He asked a bunch of open ended questions and then took our passports inside.  At this point, Katy looked in the back seat and said, “why is there a shotgun shell on the floor?”  Well, I was doing a good deed by picking up garbage the night before and didn’t even think about it.  We put it back in the garbage and hoped for the best.  It was rusty and had been fired a long time ago.  The agent came back out and asked us about our travels and the reason for our trip to Canada in 2016.  He asked about rabies paperwork for the dogs and I picked it up off the center console.  He said he didn’t need to see it, but if we didn’t have it ready he would make us search for it and take a look around the rig.  

As I said, the drive up was impressive, snowy mountains all around us.  Kluane National Park starts and you follow it for what seems like hundreds of miles.  We stopped for gas and some food in Haines Junction and continued north.  The mountains up to Dustruction Bay were a little clouded in.  The drive along Kluane Lake was impressive but it was ice covered.  We hope to see it in the fall.  The road beyond Destruction Bay got really bad.  Some spots we were down to 10mph.  We saw a bear, a moose, a few porcupines and eagles today.  

We spent the night in Beaver Creek in a rest area with the Canadian Border in sight.  It was really quiet.  Back into Alaska today.