The cover image of my Facebook profile has looked like this since about a week after that photo was taken in 2015:

I like that photo. It was taken in Haines, Alaska at Portage Cove State Recreation Site. I was younger then, so I suppose it’s unfair to keep that up forever. I’m older now. Married with kid. Grizzled. So I thought I’d go up there and snap another one:

Hey, not bad!

We would have camped at that same spot again, but camping is now prohibited at Portage Cove, an inexplicable move by, I assume, government cowards who hate people enjoying their lives. Hence the lack of tents in the new photo.

I’m jumping ahead, though. Allow me to start my travelog at the beginning.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 19th, 2023

Arrival

Getting to Southeast Alaska is fairly easy for me now that I live in the Pacific Northwest with my family. A flight from Bend -> Seattle is just an hour, and Seattle -> Juneau is 2.5.

My family, incidentally, is away on their own epic trip to Egypt!(!!) It worked out better that they went without me, which allowed me to go on this trip. So were 6,000+ miles apart for a few weeks, surely a new record for us.

I damn near missed the Juneau flight, as what should have been a leisurely layover in Seattle was decimated by delays out of Bend. The last delay was a new one for me. We were on the runway when the plane turned around and went back to park because they were informed at the last minute someone got on the plane that shouldn’t have been on it. There seem to be so many checkpoints in the way of that happening it boggles my mind. By the time we touched down in Seattle, the Juneau flight had been boarding for 30 minutes already. That’s no way territory. But incredibly, we deployed at gate B7a, and the Juneau flight was at gate B7 which had mere minutes before closing. I was off the first flight and onto the second in like 30 seconds. Divine intervention, let’s assume.

Arriving at the Juneau airport is fun. You fly into a mountain valley, so it’s a stunningly beautiful site right away. Apparently, pilots and co-pilots need to be “Juneau-qualified” to do the flight, a fact I learned when a friend coming a few days later had their flight delayed because the current co-pilot lacked this distinction and had to be replaced.

The airport itself is full of glass cases of stuffed bears. Probably not a bad idea to remind arriving tourists that there are indeed bears about. Bears will kill you, in case you haven’t seen The Revenant. I’ve seen bears in Alaska before, but alas, not on this trip, even with one excursion specifically looking for them I’ll get to later. I was clearly reminded of them a few days later when I saw the strewn-about garbage from a late-night dumpster pillaging from a local bear. It’s no wonder all local trash cans have bear locks of varying intensity. Even the public trash cans have a special closing mechanism in which you slide your hand into a little metal too-small-for-a-bear casing to pull a handle to open it, which simultaneously stops bears and confuses the more hapless tourists. Later in the trip, upon nearing the Juneau airport on a tiny Alaska Seaplane, a fellow passenger looked down spotted a bear some 100 yards from the airport (I missed it).

The smell is the first thing you notice getting off the plane. Clean, fresh, present pine. I smell this when arriving back in the Redmond airport, too, if I’ve been gone a while, but I was coming from there, so it really is extra pronounced in Juneau.

Anyway — I made it! I’m in Alaska!

Fun fact: there are about the same number of people in the I LOVE BEND Facebook group I’m in as the population of Juneau.

I was there to visit an old friend. We met in college, lived together for a bit, bartender together for years, shared a bong, and saw more live music than I’ll ever remember. This trip happened to be exactly 10 years after an epic trip we took to Scotland together, which my phone reminded me of one morning.

Justin Shoman is his name, and he lives here in Juneau. It’s his second stint here. The first was 2014-2016. I remember my furious jealousy during that time. I, too, wanted to move to Alaska but never could figure that out. We shared a pre-existing weirdly deep affinity for Alaska. Fueled, believe it or not, in part by the old TV show Northern Exposure. We had even traveled to Roslyn, Washington, where it was filmed as a bit of a fan pilgrimage in years past.

The job he found to make it happen was something like fundraising director at the local public media outlet KTOO. A better job in Denver, among other things, pulled him away a few years later, but he held onto that love of Alaska. “It has a magnetism to it.” I heard a local artist say while chatting with my friends about life in Juneau.

Now, Justin is back for another stint at KTOO, this time as President and General Manager of the entire thing, which is a friggin’ super cool job. What a way to do what you love, be a part of a community, and give back to it.

Justin grabbed me from the airport at about 10:30 pm. Pitch black in most of the world, but Juneau is actually far enough north that it is noticeably affected by, well, the tilt of the Earth. The Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun in the summer, and the effect of that is longer daylight hours (and, of course, the opposite, shorter daylight hours in the winter).

We drove straight over to the Mendenhall Glacier from the airport. Justin (and his partner Brooke) live over in the Back Loop of the Mendenhall Valley area now, which is a stone’s throw from the glacier. It’s just cool to look at, and hitting this area at this time meant no tour buses. It’s only about a 30-minute drive from where the cruise ships dock to the glacier, so it’s a popular excursion.

Justin thought we’d have the place to ourselves for the most part, but there were loads of cars there. It turns out there was a candlelight vigil happening for a man who had died just earlier than week kayaking in the lake right there. They found the empty kayak, but even as I write, they haven’t found his body yet. A chilling reminder of how dangerous this place is.

THURSDAY, JULY 20th 2023

Downtown Juneau

Justin had to work on Thursday, which was good for me because having a day to bop around downtown Juneau by myself was lovely. One of my favorite activities is being in a new town and walking around. Stop at a coffee shop, work a little, keep walking. Juneau had plenty of them to make that work.

I started at Coppa, which ended up being my favorite cafe in Juneau, and had a great cinnamon roll and coffee. They also had a “We Support KTOO” sign on the wall, which was nice to see. I snapped this photo of a painting there that did a better job of capturing the vibe than any scenery photo I took.

I also enjoyed Sacred Grounds (half-decent coffee shop pun), a 100% Native-owned and staffed business. The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, specifically. The WiFi password is Ala$ka907 in case you find yourself there. I liked the beautiful wall mural, but my favorite was the metal relief at the counter:

If you had to point to one aesthetic for Southeast Alaska, it would be Formline. See this PDF. It’s everywhere. The more you see of it, the more you pick up on different artists interpretations and variations of it.

What is today called the formline system is the foundation of Northwest Coast Alaska Native design. As the primary painted-image format of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples of Southeast Alaska, and thereby a key component of Southeast Alaska Native culture.

It’s drawn on paper, painted on buildings, printed on fabrics, sewn into quilts, etched into plastics, and fired into clay. I worry a little about cultural appropriation a bit, but apparently, it’s cool. Like: how cool is this shirt? I get the impression, though, that you probably shouldn’t try to be a formline artist unless you’re part of one of those tribes.

Speaking of heritage (heyo—segway!), I had fond memories of the Heritage coffee shop. The place has kinda gone to shit, though. I went in there a few times and was greeted with apathetic staff, near-empty cases, messy tables, and arbitrarily closed bathrooms. It just had an air of management that had stopped caring.

I’m sure the locals have mixed feelings about all the cruise ships. Surely the money is good for the town, but the piles of dopey tourists waddling off the boats and standing in the middle of the street are annoying at best. The population of Juneau is some 30,000, but 1.2 million visitors arrive via cruise ships each year in an ever-stretching season (April to October this year). There tend to be about 5 ships at a time there. I saw the Ovation of the Seas there, for example (cruise ships tend to have dedicated Wikipedia pages, I’ve learned), which is nearly 5,000 people on just one ship.

I’m a tourist myself, of course, and have a mild fascination with cruise ships, so I found looking at the ships themselves kind of interesting. I’ve never been on one, so I found myself wishing they would let me board one right there and check it out (no dice). During my walkabout on Thursday, I walked up and down the entire dock area. I found it really depressing. Hoards of seasonal employees barking at you to take a whale-watching tour or fake glacial dogsledding adventure. Worse are all the shops. At least a dozen jewelry stores that don’t have a single damn thing to do with Alaska. What kind of jackwagon wants to get off a cruise ship in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and haggle with someone over the price of a Rolex knockoff? It’s just gross, and I regret even walking through there, as it gave me a weird pit-in-the-stomach feeling. Knowing that that entire area just locks up and turns off as soon as the last cruise ship leaves is all the worse.

I shook it off by going to walk The Flume. If you’re downtown, you can walk right up to one side of it, walk it, then pop out on another side of downtown and walk back.

It’s not really a hike, just a nice little walk set so close to town that it seems like a pretty popular/iconic place to walk your dog or whatever. I’m just going to assume that’s what Justin Vernon meant when he wrote the lyrics gluey feathers on a flume. I had a few beers at The Triangle when I finished.

I saw a plaque in town about the co-founder of Juneau on my walk back in. You’ll never guess his name: Joe Juneau. lolz.

When Justin got off work, we popped over to Alaska Fish & Chips for a few more beers. It’s kind of a cheezy bar right over by the cruise ships, but it has an outdoor patio which is something of a rarity in Juneau, and a half-decent local tap list.

Then we popped out to Sandbar, in the valley, as it were, just far enough out no cruise ship tourists would ever make it. There was a band playing with a wonderfully cheesy name: TCB (Taking Care of Bluegrass). They were damn good! I would know, as I was in a local bluegrass band that wasn’t half as good.

Sandbar has a great halibut fish fry, I’m told (not much of a fish guy). The place was packed, and that’s all I saw anybody order! Tray after tray of it coming out from the kitchen. After the show was over, it was almost still too packed to eat comfortably, so we popped over to McGivney’s for dinner. The small-town vibes set in hard at this point when the bartender recognized Justin as a semi-regular.

FRIDAY, JULY 21st, 2023

Salmon Creek

It was just Justin and I this Friday. His partner Brooke was out of town until Saturday night, and my friend Matt, who is joining us on this trip, didn’t come in until late (the same flight I had two nights prior).

We decided to get a hike in: Salmon Creek. Mostly a gentle climb, but a really steep section to start it and a very steep ending as you approach the dam.

We brought Justin’s dog Georgie with us. Apparently, Georgie has been acting up a little (not listening) a bit more since moving back to Alaska, so Justin took the opportunity to stop at Petco on the way out and buy some dog treats to do obedience training with. Every time Georgie got too far, we’d stop and get her to come back promising a treat, which mostly worked.

The end is really stunning. The steep, gnarly climb gives way to a little path down to the dam itself. The dam is old and mossy (built in 1914!) yet sturdy and majestic, daring you to question if it’s still got what it takes to do its job. Two girls who came up behind us boldly jumped right into the lake, spawning an echoey gigglefest we heard as we started walking back down.

On the way back out, the thing Justin feared the worst happened: Georgie spotted a porcupine and went after it. Justin offered treats and they must have had just enough pull to prevent getting spined. Justin has experienced this first-hand in the past with a different dog, on the same exact trail, creating a real emergency situation and leading to a period of pulling out spines with plyers from the dog for months. Thank god it didn’t happen this time. I tried to get a video of the porcupine climbing the nearest tree (that’s mostly where they live, apparently) but didn’t get much.

Best I can tell, there are three really iconic plants in the area:

1) Devil’s Club

Huge leaves, super spikey, the berries are used for all kinds of stuff.

2) Fireweed

Just pretty. We were there at the perfect time to see it bloom. Fireweed gummy bear ingredients include: high fructose corn syrup, pink food colors, not fireweed.

3) Skunk Cabbage

Massive leaves. Apparently it smells funky, but when were were there that time of the season had passed.

We rolled into downtown again after the hike and bopped around a bit. I bought a dry shirt at Foggy Mountain. We got a beer at The Alaskan and the very cool Devil’s Club Brewery. Then a cocktail at Amalga Distillery. I think Amalga just makes Gin and Whiskey but also several canned cocktails. I got the Sea Donkey (Gin & Housemade Ginger Beer), which was just A++ perfect.

I found it interesting that local politics got involved here again with the very explicit goal of ruining fun:

That night we hit the Pucker Wilson’s food truck then stayed up to pick up Matt from the airport (wicked delayed flight again!) at something like 11:30 pm. We drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier again, as it’s such a cool thing to see upon arriving in Juneau.

SATURDAY, JULY 22nd, 2023

Mount Roberts

Three of us today and the first order of business was breakfast. Sandpiper downtown did the trick.

We were right next to the KTOO building, and it being a weekend was a great time for a tour. Despite having produced, I dunno, easily over 1,000 podcasts and videos, I don’t think I’ve ever seen inside a proper radio or TV station. They’ve got proper studios with well-mounted mics and equipment and sound dampeners and all that.

One of my favorite things to see was an old notebook of one of the radio hosts.

We were still downtown so we decided we’d take the opportunity to hike up Mount Roberts, one of the mountains that frames the city. You can take a tram right up it, but we walked it instead. It was foggy and rainy, but that gave everything a cozy atmospheric vibe that was nice, even if it did neuter what surely would have been epic views.

We stopped at the top of the tram to grab a beer at the restaurant up there, then kept going a bit. You can get a decent hike in if you keep going from there, but we just went a little further, to Father John’s Cross.

Someone had been up there earlier, possibly getting engaged? There was a big heart-shaped out of flower petals in the middle of the path!

We took the tram back down. Apparently, it’s only $20 back down instead of the $48 normal price, or you can buy $20 worth of stuff in the gift shop. I bought some formline socks, then nobody checked the receipt anyway — not that I regret the socks.

Something rather surreal happened as we got off the tram and started walking back downtown. There was a honest-to-god catwalk fashion show happening right on the streets of Juneau, right out of a quirky Northern Exposure episode.

We popped into The Alaskan for another beer and noted there was a band playing there later in the evening (turns out that was enough for us: we went back later that night). First, we went back home and cleaned up, hit the Island Pub on Douglas for some very solid pizza, grabbed a drink at Louie’s (and cracked some pull tabs), and then headed back downtown. We stopped at the big Humpback statue on the way because that seemed mandatory:

The band back at The Alaskan was called Dude Mountain in from Ketchikan. They were young dudes just playing rock and roll with their hearts out. The place was jammed, everyone was dancing, and it was just as good of a show as you could ever hope for.

Justin’s partner Brooke was returning that evening, but this time the flight was so late we ended up leaving the car at the airport and Ubering back (there is Uber there!). We stopped at a dispensary (that happened to be open super late) and left her some treats.

SUNDAY, JULY 23nd, 2023

North Douglas

I had booked us a tour-guided adventure for this morning, so we got up early and went for breakfast at Donna’s. It was another foggy and rainy morning, and while we were there, I got a phone call from the company that our tour would have to be delayed or cancelled. After a little back and forth, we ended up pushing back until Sunday. So we had the whole day free all the sudden!

We headed back out to Douglas and walked around the woods and beach up there for a while.

After that little jaunt we drove up to Eaglecrest, the ski resort, to have a look, then back down into Juneau.

One interesting thing about driving “the road” in Juneau: it’s filthy with Eagles. Bald eagles are not some rare sight there. The only bird you’ll see more of is ravens. The road is along inlet waterways (some of it is called “Eagle Creek”) which are highly effected by the tide, and the eagles must love the low tide food pickins.

Next stop: the Last Chance Mining Museum.

Lots of mining history in Juneau, and really all over the place in Alaska. Mines are still a top employer in Juneau, but the actual mines have moved away from being essentially right downtown. The “downtown” is actually largely built on excavated rock from the mines themselves back in the day!

Dinner that night at Squirez Bar in Auke Bay. Then we headed out down the road a bit and had a campfire out on the beach. Aside from the clutch combo of Aperol Spritzes and S’mores, we witnessed something I’m not sure I ever thought I’d see: a salmon run! I guess it’s common knowledge that salmon are born in (freshwater) streams, live their lives in the (saltwater) ocean, and then return to the (freshwater) streams to spawn (and die ☠️). But it’s pretty wild to see it.

MONDAY, JULY 24th, 2023

Norris Glacier & Cowee Meadow

Huge day today. We already had plans (and reservations) to hike out to the Cowee Meadow Cabin and stay the night there, but now our re-scheduled glacier adventure is the same day. Oh well, we ride!

We took it easy in the morning and then met our tour company (Above & Beyond Alaska) to get suited up and over to the airport. We took a sea plane to the glacier, as it literally had to land in a glacial lake to get us onto the glacier. Matt got the co-pilots seat on the way up! Awesome views on the way up.

We hopped off the plane right onto a small beach, then hiked back toward the glacier. There was water before the face of the glacier, so we took little pack rafts from there.

We got off the boats at the glacier and then walked all around it. I mean, like, the first couple hundred feet anyway. The whole thing is many square miles not to mention wildly dangerous. Dangerous how? Well it’s a big block of ice, so it’s fricking slippery. It’s full of these holes formed by rocks that warm in the sun and then melt down over time. The holes can easily be big enough for a human to fall into, meaning you’re falling into this place nobody anywhere near has any way of getting you out of, and might be so deep it falls into the rivers that go underneath the glacier which has gotta be up there on worst ways to die. Plus the whole thing is cracking and breaking apart, with major structural changes happening daily. Not the place for a casual stroll, but very cool to explore carefully.

We got back and grabbed lunch at Sandbar and then packed up to take off for our hike out to Cowee Meadow.

Matt ended up sleeping outside, only to be woken up in the wee hours of the morning but a wild horse munching on grass right by his feet. Very glad it wasn’t a bear as we were deep in bear country.

TUESDAY, JULY 25th, 2023

SALT

We hiked back in from the cabin in the morning after some much-needed camping coffee. We bummed around the house a bit, watching Grizzly Man, the Werner Herzog documentary about the entirely unhinged Timothy Treadwell and his obsession with brown bears (it doesn’t end well).

We rolled downtown again and visited the Alaska State Museum. We ended up lingering there for a good while as it was very well done and interesting. For example, the remnants of a wicker basket that was 5,500 years old, a bit older than the pyramids in Egypt, which were top-of-mind as my wife and daughter were visiting those at the same exact time.

There was a bunch of interesting stuff about the trade connections between China, Russia, and Alaska. I found the stuff about shipwrecks really interesting, like the SS Princess Sophia, which was extra tragic as a bunch of boats showed up the save the people, but the captain thought he had it, so the boats left, then by the time he was like “no wait actually come help” the weather was so bad they couldn’t, and everyone died.

We bounced around downtown a little again, buying some gifts and whatnot, and then to our reservation at SALT. I think SALT is about as fancy of dining as exists in Juneau, and they did a fine job. I recommend the deserts though, they really outshined the rest of the meal.

We called it early as Matt had a super early flight out of Juneau the next morning.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 26th, 2023

Perseverance

Justin and I dropped Matt off at the airport early and then headed right out for a hike on Perseverance Trail. To me, this is another absolute gem of Juneau: an incredibly beautiful hike that leaves right from downtown Juneau off Basin road (full of absolutely lovely flower-riddled houses). The trail is challenging enough to be worth it, mountain bikeable, weaves around a beautiful river, offers views of several gushing waterfalls, and is rife with mining history.

If it can’t be grown, it’s gotta be mined.

— Pro-mining bumper sticker I saw.

It was still early when we got back down, but obviously, a beer was in order. Unfortunately, the only thing open was the dorky fake-saloon Red Dog. I was drenched and would have loved to buy a new shirt. I actually prefer my wardrobe to be mostly branded attire purchased in distress, like when you go to a concert and it gets too cold, so you buy a Blues Traveller hoodie. But, the t-shirts are so dumb at Red Dog I couldn’t even. A drinking town with a fishing problem huyuk-hukuk. The beer was fine, though, and I did want to see their giant stuffed halibuts (what a weird-looking fish).

We went home, cleaned up, grabbed Brooke, and headed back to town for breakfast at The Rookery, which I’ll 🏆 award the finest breakfast in Juneau. We bummed around town a little, as it was my last day to pick up gifts and whatnot), then headed home. We took it really easy as I think we were all kinda fried, including cooking dinner in. We did pop over to Forbidden Peak for a quick beer, though.

THURSDAY, JULY 27th, 2023

Haines

We woke up early and caught the 7:00 am ferry to Haines. The ol’ Malaspina (that’s the name of the boat). A big ol’ 450-passenger beast that has the job of going between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway.

What it did for us is deliver an incredibly chill 4.5-hour voyage up the inner channel to the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to.

Haines is some 1,700 people, a fact I found hard to shake because of how isolated it is. I feel like if I spent a day doing it, I could think of more than 1,700 skilled jobs that need to be done in order for a city to function, meaning that functional adults there are likely doing several of them just to make civilization happen. I wasn’t overwhelmed by that, though: I felt plenty of whimsy. Partially because as we arrived, we watched someone waterskiing, a particularly brave endeavor in Alaska at any time of year. Partially because we were headed there to attend the world’s quaintest event: the Southeast Alaska State Fair. Partially because I read the book If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name by Heather Lende, a book very directly about Haines, which showcased the city and its inhabitants in a full glorious spectrum.

The ferry itself was filled with interesting characters. A group of gutter punk musicians and their dog slept on the floor. A group of folks of all ages and races all huddled together and really softly worked out vocal melodies to Uncle John’s Band by the Grateful Dead, using an iPad keyboard to find the right notes. A group of twentysomething men had endlessly banal conversations, and when I turned around to sneak a peak, I found them with plugged-in laptops playing DOOM while they were chatting. And families and toddlers and just about every other slice of life you can think of.

The night before, while doing a little web surfing about the camping situation in Haines, we got spooked we might not find something, so Justin was able to last-minute book a room at Captain’s Choice Motel. From the road, the faded yellow sign and busted-up parking lot make it seem like we’re in for a pretty gnarly room situation, but I was dead wrong! It was very nice! The view was incredible, and our room was very clean, cozy, and well put-together. I’d stay there again anytime.

We settled in a bit and then walked around town a little. If you couldn’t tell by now, we’re the types to pop into the local bars, so that was the first port of call. The Fogcutter seems like the most happening bar. We were immediately welcomed in by a very nice and very drunk local. She said it was the day before her birthday, and was clearly on a mission. We plugged the juke box and were 3 shots deep in less than an hour. We had to get out of there though lest we lose the whole (beautiful) day inside a dark bar.

We needed to get to the fair! Fortunately, we found a cool forest path from the town over to the fairgrounds. Here’s a cool overhead shot of the fair from the website:

We took the whole fair that day. Part of it was used on the film set of White Fang, in case you weren’t already jealous. We browsed the artist’s booths, explored the contest winners, watched people enjoying the games and rides, drank a glass of wine in the gardens, and ate interesting “you can’t get it anywhere else!” food. I went for Indigenous Tacos. Have you heard of Indian Fry Bread? It has a sordid history. When the U.S. government was forcing indigenous people off their lands, it was often to places less fertile where food couldn’t be grown as easily. They were provided with flour, salt, and lard, which was then necessarily turned into bread and thus became a staple food item for them. The good news is that the tacos are delicious (the photo in this recipe is about what they looked like).

Adding a bit to the isolated region vibes, we saw literally the same blues band perform at the fair as we did one afternoon at The Alaskan in Juneau. Then a talent show! We watched the Haines Dance Team perform, we watched people perform acrobatics on silks, we listened to a mayoral-candidate do a freeform (comedy?) sketch that was almost incomprehensible, we watched a local guy bring his electric guitar on stage and just “shred” for four minutes which was angsty and weird, and then watched a trumpet/piano duo perform who really knocked it out of the park and that was before they guy ended the set with a standing backflip in wedding reception attire.

We ended up getting pizza at a place called Fireweed that was about twice as good as it needed to be, before heading in for the night. We passed The Fogcutter again, and peered inside wondering if our birthday girl was still there, but no. “Maybe she’ll be around the corner, it’s not a big town” Brooke said, prophetically. Yeah, right, like someone you met once in your life and know literally nothing about who was solid drunk 8 hours ago will be, just, what, standing in the road around the corner? Readers: she was standing in the road around the corner. It was weird — you had to be there.

Here’s something you should probably know about Alaska: everybody has the same boots. They are called XTRATUFF and they are brown with tan soles. Here. So I really enjoyed this prizing-winning bit of art from the fair:

We took photos on the hour for most of the day!

Anywhere here’s a picture of a hammer:

FRIDAY, JULY 28th, 2023

Roadhouse

Breakfast at The Bamboo Room.

Interesting small-town thing at our motel the Captain’s Choice: they rented us a car. The CAPT14, naturally. Kind of a cool double-duty service for them to offer, but it also just makes sense. If you somehow made it to Haines without a car (like we did, we just walked on the ferry), you might be staying at a motel, and you might want a car. Plus ain’t no way there is gonna be a Hertz in Haines.

We used the car to drive over to the beach where Justin and Brooke set up camp for night two. Not for me though, I had booked an Alaskan Seaplane back to Juneau later that day as I needed to get back for my flight home early Saturday morning. We grabbed pretzels from Peterson’s Pretzels which has a little cart right there — and yet again — much more delicious than they needed to be. This is when I snagged the photo from the top of this post as well!

Since we had the car, we took the opportunity to drive up the Chilkoot River and Recreation Area. We’d seen bears there in years past and were hoping to again, but no luck. It’s fun seeing a bear from a moving metal cage. The area is also lousy with fisherman, there to catch the same thing the bears are: salmon.

Then we cruised up the highway on the other side of the penisula out to the 33 Mile Roadhouse. You’ll never guess how many miles away it is. Just kind of an iconic place, I take it. Haines is actually connect via roads to the rest of Alaska (unlike Juneau), so if people were arriving for the fair via car, they’d come through here. Thus, it was busy! They clear only had one server, which is probably more than enough most days, but they were too busy to take us and we had to boogie.

They dropped me off at the Haines Airport (which exists!) so I could catch my little plane back to Juneau. Apparently I couldn’t go anywhere without something interesting happening: on my flight (of 8 people), one of them was Dustin Hurt (this guy) from Gold Rush fame (TV show). I didn’t recognize him but the woman standing next to me sure did.

“You were my favorite on Gold Rush.”
“You’re the only person who’s ever told me that.”
“No, really!”
“Apparently I’m kind of an asshole. I’ve never watched it.”

The flight was lovely of course. I had booked a hotel right by the Juneau airport so I just cooped up in there for the night. There was no air conditioning at the hotel, which is apparently pretty normal, but really sucked that night as it was hot as heck (weird thing to say in Alaska, but it was).

Totally uneventful 6 am flight back to Seattle. But there was a cool twist! Miranda and Ruby were flying in from Paris (the 2nd leg of their flight back from Egypt) and we met at the airport for the last leg of our flights back to Redmond (Bend). We didn’t even plan it that way, but it worked out perfectly.

Until next time, Alaska.

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