Gustavus, Flynn Cove, Hoonah

Laura Domela — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 18:19:47 +0000

Tiffani and Deke’s flight (referred to locally as “The Jet”) arrived in Gustavus on time and they were at the city dock via TLC Taxi in no time!

We took off for Flynn Cove, across Icy Strait, to meet up with Sam on Safe Harbour.

In the first hour of Alaska for Tiffani and Deke, we saw giant steller sea lions flinging salmon around, many rafts of otters, and a whole bunch of humpbacks…tail slapping, fin slapping, and a few full breaches. I guess that’ll do!

Beautiful out on Icy Strait:

Flynn Cove, with just one other boat:

We rafted with Safe Harbour in Flynn Cove and had dinner together, and in the morning we headed for Hoonah where we were not really counting on our scheduled flightseeing trip to Glacier Bay to happen due to the less than ideal weather, and we were correct. They called at 10am and said they had to cancel. We arrived in Hoonah and took a walk out to Icy Strait Point for lunch and some touristing, then to Hoonah Trading Co. for some groceries. We showered and napped and worked a little back at our boats, and then walked down to Icy Strait Brewing that evening to grab a beer and some dinner from the Thai food truck next door (Srisa…so good!)

View from the deck:

Yesterday in Hoonah, Sam had us over to Safe Harbour for breakfast (delicious waffles!!) and then we did a little last minute gathering of a few more groceries at what we call the “Tiny Expensive Costco” … I can’t remember the name of the place (Colleen’s Cupboard maybe?) but it’s basically a Costco resale store. Great when you need it, but you pay about double the Costco price. Considering they’ve got to get all that stuff up here from Juneau, it seems pretty fair.

Oh yeah, we were able to get a last minute permit for Glacier Bay (for both boats!) for the 27th, so that’s what we’re doing next. We stayed in Sawmill Bay in Excursion Inlet again last night since we had a day to kill. We fished on the way in and caught a nice big coho, so we had grilled salmon, risotto, and asparagus for dinner last night. Crab traps had two big Dungies in ‘em this morning, so we’ll probably have some crab leg appetizers tonight, and maybe salmon tacos.

One black bear in Sawmill Bay:

We are now headed for Bartlett Cove and into Glacier Bay National Park for a few days. The weather isn’t great, but maybe things will improve a bit once we’re further into the park.

Hoonah to Excursion Inlet

Laura Domela — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:39:44 +0000

The weather was supposed to pick up in Icy Strait on Friday afternoon and continue through Saturday, and since we needed to be in Gustavus to pick up Tiffani and Deke on Saturday, we figured it’d be a good idea to be nearer than Hoonah, so we left on Friday morning and headed for Excursion Inlet, just east of Gustavus.

Calm in Hoonah harbor:

No cruise ships here during our visit (which might explain why the brewery was closed):

See you in a couple days, Hoonah!

We saw some splashing in the distance as we made our way across Icy Strait…there were a few humpbacks over by the Porpoise Islands doing a whole lot of breaching and fin slapping, so we headed their way and watched them for a bit before going on into Excursion Inlet.

The east arm of Excursion Inlet is not part of Glacier Bay National Park, but the west arm is, so on the right side you’ll see houses dotting the shore, a seafood processing plant, and a gathering of buildings up from the public dock that was a prisoner of war encampment during WWII, but now houses a store and a small museum.

We continued up the left arm toward a little cove called Sawmill Bay. There were two humpbacks making their way along the shore (taking advantage of the large schools of tiny fish we could see on sonar, I assume) and we had to wait for them to finish up in our cove before we could anchor. We anchored in about 60 feet. Gorgeous here!

Sam on Safe Harbour met up with us a few hours later and once it stopped raining we went exploring in Sam’s (fast) dinghy.

Tons of jellies in here:

Cannery remains (I think) in the east arm:

Cabin on the shore:

We tied up to the public dock, which looked quite a bit better from Airship as we passed it from a distance than it does up close.

The little store (Coho General Mercantile) has a surprising selection of goods! The Cannery Museum appeared to be closed:

Our friends Tiffani and Deke were scheduled to come into Gustavus last night, but their flight into Seattle was too late to catch the connection, so they stayed in Seattle last night and are booked on the flight into Gustavus today. We just stayed another night in Sawmill Bay and had a nice time cooking dinner with Sam. We rafted to each other this time…eliminating the wet rainy dinghy rides to and fro.

View from Airship this morning:

The route from Hoonah to Sawmill Bay in Excursion Inlet (25.4 miles, 4 hours 47 minutes):

We’re in Gustavus now, tied up to the public dock waiting for “the jet” (as the locals call it). The guy working the dock here was super friendly and told me that the few taxis in town are usually booked ahead of time for when “the jet” comes in. We still had a few hours before “the jet” arrived, so I was able to call and reserve “the cab.” Whew!!

We’ll get T&D and then head across Icy Strait this evening to meet back up with Sam in Flynn Cove. We’ve got a Glacier Bay flightseeing trip scheduled for tomorrow at 11:30 out of Hoonah, so we’ll be in Hoonah tomorrow for that, as well as some provisioning (and maybe some touristing out at Icy Strait Point).

Posting might be less regular for the next couple weeks, but I’ll take tons of photos (of course) and catch up when there’s time.

Happy Sunday!

Excursion Inlet – Riveted

Gustavus, Flynn Cove, Hoonah

Hoonah to Excursion Inlet