Alaska -- Day 94

Fort Seward was established in 1898, the last of 11 military posts in Alaska built to maintain order during the Klondike Gold Rush. Originally a tent camp, it wasn't permanently garrisoned until 1902. The fort included about 85 wood frame buildings around a parade grounds. It had no fortifications. From 1925 to 1940 it was the only military post in Alaska. This shows officers' row.



The commanding officer lived in this building. Since the facility was sold to private investors in 1947, it was converted to a hotel. The Halsingford Hotel is still there and includes a seafood restaurant.



Most of the officers' homes are now duplexes. One calls itself a condo.



Some of the buildings are in very good repair; others need at least a good coat of paint. One needed a chimney repair and another probably needs some roof work.





Each of the duplexes has a pretty oval window on one end.



Decommissioned in 1940, the fort was purchased by several World War II veterans and their families in 1947. This 1928 cannon (or gun?) is located on the parade grounds.



An 1861 breech-loading cannon sits in front of the former post office and switchboard.



This neat 1930 automobile is displayed in front of another building.



Once the post hospital, this building now houses the Indian Arts Council. Post doctors were allowed to subsidize their army pay by treating civilians from the area.

Alaska -- Day 93

What on earth is going on here?



We drove to the Alaska Marine Highway dock today. On the way, this is what we saw. If you have a boat in Haines and want to ship it to, oh say Juneau, what do you do? You load it on the boat trailer and take it to the ferry dock. It is driven onto a large sheet of green metal and tied down. Then a fork lift picks all of that up and lowers it onto a green shipping container. Apparently, the whole container, boat and all, is loaded on a freight ferry. We saw a car on top of another container. That is what it is to live on the Alaska Inside Passage. Here it is going down on the container.



After double checking the time our ferry sails on Monday, we drove on down the Lynn Canal, the fjord that runs north from the Inside Passage and is the location of both Haines and Skagway. Wikipedia states,
"Lynn Canal is an inlet (not an artificial canal) into the mainland of southeast Alaska.Lynn Canal runs about 90 miles (140 km) from the inlets of the Chilkat River south to Chatham Strait and Stephens Passage. At over 2,000 feet (610 m) in depth, Lynn Canal is the deepest fjord in North America and one of the deepest and longest in the world as well."

The scenery is stunning. I can understand why people live here.





The canal is fed by this stream where lots of salmon are spawning. We saw these folks fishing. The group included people who are parked next to us. We saw one of the party and learned one of the young boys had already caught a fish.



When we talked to them later, we learned a large brown bear had wandered up. All the anglers decided it was time to leave!

This is a view of Fort Seward, an early US Army fort in Haines. It is now privately owned and the buildings are rented for housing.



We wandered through downtown and saw beautiful flowers, like in other Alaska towns.



There is a hammer museum in Haines. We hope to visit it tomorrow. This bicycle out front tells us it will probably be really interesting.