Alsek River Day 15, Last day

July 20, 2012

Alsek Lake with the Knob in foreground.

The plane arrives right on schedule and we pack it full of gear before the five of us climb in and we fly away leaving half of our gear behind, sitting next to the runway!

The flight back was awesome! Our pilot, Drake, took us on flight seeing tour! Not so good for Pat and I, we both suffer from motion sickness in small planes. A couple of tight turns in a row and then a dramatic pull up and the nausea sets in. We get extraordinary views though and thankfully the dramatic moves of the plane were done within 10 minutes of our destination, Haines, so we didn’t suffer for too long.

After we unload all the gear and Drake removes the passenger seats he flies back to Dry Bay to get the rest of our stuff. Our vehicles are sitting in the parking lot waiting for us (thank you Steve) so we head into town for lunch. Pat hangs out at the airstrip, he isn't quite ready for food after the flight so he and I head back to town a little later so that he can get lunch. 

Drake returns with the remainder of our stuff, we did fit in two plane loads! We load it into the vehicles and head out to find our friend Steve. We would like to take him out to lunch or dinner to thank him and his friends for driving 3 hours to Haines Junction to pick up our vehicles and drive them back to Haines for us. We stop by his place of employment but he has the day off. Luckily the guy Pat talks to knows where Steve lives and gives us directions to the house that Steve is building. No one is home when we arrive but we take a few minutes to look around because the house is pretty amazing! Steve comes home while we are checking things out, he can't make it for dinner but we spend some chatting and making tentative plans to run the Nahanni River next summer!

Our next stop is an RV park to take showers. I can't remember now if it was $3 or $4 dollars to take a shower but whatever it was, it was totally worth it! Great water pressure, lots of hot water, soap, shampoo, and a clean towel.

Now that we are clean we are ready to pack ourselves into the vehicles for the drive to Haines Junction. The border crossing station closes at 11pm but more importantly the Village Bakery closes at 9pm! The drive to Haines Junction and the border crossing is thankfully uneventful, we just enjoy the nice scenery. We arrive at the Village Bakery by 8:30. There is live music on the deck (it is Friday night) so the bakery doesn’t close until almost 10:30. Good food and good music, a very nice end to the day.

On the way out of the bakery Pat sees a Black Fly canoe in the back of a pick-up truck and he heads back in to find the owner. He stands up in front of the crowd (music has ended now) and speaks up loudly saying “excuse me, does anyone know who owns the black fly canoe parked out front?” No one answers but Michael (who was waiting out by the car for us, as we were waiting by the bathrooms for him) saw the owner park and go in. He heads back to show Pat who the guy is. The Black Fly owner was the only guy still inside the bakery when Pat made his announcement. They talk for 15-20 minutes and then we head back to the Pine Lake campground for the night.

We drive all the way back to Anchorage the next day.

We had a great trip with amazing scenery, interesting water, and good friends. It doesn't get too much better than that!