Mile 6272 – Haines, AK

We spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights in Haines one of the nicest stops we have made. 

City of Haines.

Haines boat Harbor.

Looking up the fjord form Haines towards Skagway.

We drove to Chilkoot Lake where we saw a mother grizzly bear teaching her cubs to fish.

Haines is known for a gathering of eagles beginning in early November.  The stream here is one of the last places in Alaska to freeze in winter.  The salmon know this and continue to come to Haines to spawn after other areas are frozen.  The eagles take advantage of the spawning salmon.  Somewhere between 3000 and 4000 eagles converge on Haines during the winter.  We toured the American Bald Eagle Foundation where they take in wounded birds.  Both of the birds below have a broken radius in the fore arm.

Haines is also home to one of only two hammer museums in the world.  The little museum contains over 1000 hammers.

A couple of the more unusual hammers are the poster hammer and the autopsy hammer.  Long handles on the poster hammers allowed poster to be placed at a high position. 

One of my favorite hammers is the drink hammer.  Apparently during the 20’s and 30’s many night clubs provided hammers with the drinks.  When you were ready for another drink, just tap the glass with the hammer.

More bears along the Chilkoot river.

The following video shows a ‘fish wheel’ used by the native Alaskans for catching fish.  The stream current turns the wheel like a paddle wheel.  As the wheel turns it traps fish in the paddles and as the reaches the top it dumps the fish into a chute that guides the fish into a holding tank.