Day 17 - Haines Junction

Haines Junction is one of a number of small towns that didn't exist before the construction of the Alaska Highway and, like a lot of those towns, it was originally made of wood and burned down a couple of times before they cottoned on to the root cause.  A second highway here connects the Alaska Highway to Haines in Alaska, hence the name of this town, Haines Junction.  It's a town that, these days, relies on tourism for business, leaning heavily on the adjacent Kluane National Park.  A major new visitor and cultural information centre was built here in 2011, but to the consternation of local residents it's only open from May to September, thus denying the town winter business which it badly needs.

I knew nothing about this town when I was planning this holiday.  It seemed like a logical place to stop on our Klondike/Kluane loop, and would give us a chance to see some fantastic scenery and do some walking.  Walking (not hiking, not yet anyway) is something I wanted to do to take advantage of the amount of weight I've lost over the last year (in real terms, equivalent to my combined checked in and hand luggage allowance for this holiday - how I used to walk around with that all the time I can't imagine).  Prior to my diet, walking up the stairs was hard work, now I wanted to get out into the countryside, and Haines Junction seemed the place to do it.  I bought a walking guide to the area by Vivien Lougheed, and picked out a few walks of no more than a couple of hours each on which I figured that Sandra would be able to keep up with me on her short little legs.

Our first stop this morning was the big and very modern visitor information centre.  The Holland America people got there before us, two coachloads of them, and were poking and prodding exhibits in a disinterested fashion.  It seems to be a hallmark of these people, where ever we've seen them they just seem to be waiting for it to be time to get back on the coach and go to the next place, where they can get off the coach and wait around to get back on the coach again.  We waited until they'd all gone into a room where they were being shown a video about something, then picked up a couple of maps from the information desk, one being a walking tour of Haines Junction itself.

The walking tour is mentioned in my hiking guide, and it was one of the walks I'd always intended us to do, so, in the glorious sunshine and with the Auriol Range of mountains towering over the town to the west, we set off.  To get to Point Of Interest Number 1 (the St. Elias Convention Centre) in the walking tour guide, we had to walk past Points Of Interest Number 21 (the Glacier View Motel, constructed of modular residences and "assorted orange crates" left over from the Haines Junction maintenance camp during the construction of the Alaska Highway), 18 (St. Christopher's Anglican Church), 19 (Our Lady of the Way Catholic Church, made out of a converted American army Quonset Hut) and 3 (the Old Fire Hall, now the Museum Of Nostalgia set up by a man with the unlikely name of Smokey Guttman - you have no idea how bummed I was that this place was closed).  We arrived at the St. Elias Convention Centre just as two coaches, which had obviously skipped the fascinations of POIs 21, 18, 19 and 3, disgorged their contents of disgruntled Holland America tourists into the car park.  They were in a surly mood, looking for food: a room had been set aside for them with sandwiches and drinks supplied, but many of them took several attempts to find it (indeed, some of them may still be looking).

The St. Elias Convention Centre had a feature on life in the Haines Junction area from pre-Gold Rush (it was an area the First Nation people travelled through on their long annual migrations) through to present day.  We left while the Holland America people were still refuelling, and heading on to POI Number 4, Pugwash's Place.  This is a cabin previously owned by Fraser Pollard (now deceased) - from Pugwash, Nova Scotia - since the 1970s.  Mr. Pollard would "scavenge treasures" from the local dump in order to supplement his income.  When the village bought a compactor for the dump as part of a waste management project, the wily Mr. Pollard sought and gained employment... as the waste compactor operator.

The Holland America people were missing all this great stuff.

From here we made our way to POI Number 8.  This consists of a number of what look like planks raised up high above the ground on other planks, and when I first saw them yesterday I bet Sandra any amount of money she would like to name that they had at one point been used for hanging and drying salmon.  I was completely wrong, but never more delighted when I found out their true use.  POI Number 8 is the Haines Junction Swallow Haven.  Anyone who has had swallows nesting in the eaves of their house knows what a nuisance these birds can be.  To overcome this, the people of Haines Junction built a series of raised false eaves for the swallows: the birds moved in by the hundreds, with the added bonus that each bird devours enormous quantities of the local mosquito population, thus reducing the need for pesticide control.  Simple and brilliant.

From there we looped back up towards the village, taking a photo op at the Antler Signpost (POI Number 12), before ending up at the Village Bakery and Deli.  This pleasant log cabin has plenty of outdoor picnic seating, and serves up freshly made bread, pizza, sandwiches, wraps, panninis, etc.  We sat in the sun with our chosen lunches, and lapped up the good weather for a while.

After that we came back to our Suite, changing into trainers rather than sandals, and headed out for a walk around the Dezadeash Trail (the Dezadeash being the river that runs to the south of the town).  This, according to my guide books, is an easy walk, just 90 minutes or so, and in the heat of the afternoon it was all we wanted.  A warning sign at the start of the trail tells you that you're in bear country now, and another board warns ominously, "what you see isn't the same as what sees you".  Suitably terrified, we set off, clumping and coughing and making a lot of noise (so that the bears would know where to find us).

It was a good walk, nice to be out in the open after three days of virtually continuous driving.  There were a lot of mosquitoes and flies though, it was a good job we were both sprayed up with insect repellant.  We saw three squirrels and a prairie dog, and when we got to the end of the walk we had an ice cream for a treat.  Then, because it was late afternoon, we came back and sat out on the deck for a while, listening to weird bird calls and reading (or in my case, pulling together pictures for the Flickr site).

We still have a few days left of our holiday.  I'd thought about booking a flight over to the glaciers and mountain ranges beyond the mountains we can see bordering this tiny town, but to be honest we're both kinda "full up" with trips and organising complicated days out.  We just want to take it easy for these last days.

And of course, get some more walking in... I didn't buy that compass for nothing.