July 18 -- Haines, Alaska

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Welcome to Haines, Alaska, population 2400.

These pics were taken from the deck of the ship.









Note raindrops on railing. Clearly it rained during the night or early morning, but we didn't get one drop of rain to dampen our plans that day.







These pics were also taken from the deck of the ship, facing away from town.









We decided to have a look at the Sheldon Museum, so we walked off the ship and turned right when we got to the sidewalk at the end of the pier.

The museum is about a quarter of a mile from the ship. The pic I showed you a couple days ago of the ship with fireweed in the foreground was taken as we walked to the museum.

We came to a memorial for people lost at sea. We were so lucky with the weather. We only saw the sea in her most peaceful and friendly aspect....







If I had been paying attention, I could have had the ship the shot above, but I neatly and entirely blocked it with the memorial totem pole.

Here you can see the ship and the totem pole.

I hadn't quite realized, until I started editing these Haines images, how tired I was of pics of just water and mountains and ice. I mean, those things are all spectacular, and I am very pleased with many of those pics.

But I was verrrrry happy today to work on some pics that were closer up. And had orange................ The same feeling I got last year when we went to the state fair, and I blogged monochromatic animals for days and days until I just HAD to got to the farmers' market and get some flower shots for some COLOR......

Not that the blues and greens of the last few days aren't wonderful. But I need orange. And yellow. And purple......................... Turquoise. Hot pink.







We were not the only ones in this little park. If this were Ann Arbor, I would think these were crows, given the size of the clover. But it is Alaska, where the clover is immense, and I believe these are ravens.

The clover flowers were at least twice as big as the clover in southeast Michigan, and were so fragrant. Mmmmmmm.

I believe this is a parent with an adolescent. "But Mo - om, I'm still hunnnngry, and there's nothing to eeeeeeat!"

I heard ravens making a wide variety of noises, in Haines. I mentioned it to our river guide later that day. She said that ravens have different dialects in different areas, and she thought the ones in Haines made more different sounds than any others she had heard anywhere else.






In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, a link to the next one is here.

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