Nina woke this morning with sore eyes so we spent a good amount of time today getting her to see the medical clinic.

The story of the town of Haines is strongly linked to Fort Seward, also called Chilkoot Barracks which was established at the turn of the 20th century, during a period of border disputes between Canada and the US, to establish and protect US claims to parts of southern Alaska. The town of Haines developed close by the fort to provide commercial support.

The fort remained an operational military base until after the second world war. It then lay abandoned for many years until a group of WWII veterans purchased the land and the buildings in the 1990s.

We spent much of the day sightseeing around the town and near by lakes and rivers. One of the highlights was the Hammer Museum which is apparently world famous and had an extensive collection of hammer like tools dating back as far as ancient Egypt.

Around midday we checked in at the ferry terminal for the evening ferry trip to Skagway only to discover that the man behind the counter - Mr Wilson - was also the owner of a Tiger motor home, which he had bought used, just the previous year. Needless to say we spent some time discussing the merits of the vehicles. Later in the day we happened to drive past his house; so our Tiger got to meet its older sibling.

Late in the afternoon while we sat in the ferry line waiting to board we witnessed an interesting display of truck driving. The ferry was carrying a number of larger trailers, the type that are hauled by 18 wheel trucks, and there are a couple of prime movers at the dock to tow these things off the ferry. A number of these trailers had to be reversed off the ferry, requiring the driver to back-up nearly 100 yards, up a narrow loading ramp onto the dock. Very impressive.

The scenery from the ferry was impressive, and will be repeated again tomorrow on our trip to Juneau.

We arrived in Skagway about 11:00 pm, so we found a quiet street, parked and hit the beds for the night.