We took an early morning ferry (the M/V Malaspina) from Juneau to the small town of Haines, Alaska. The town’s claim to fame is that the Disney film White Fang was shot here. They built a gold rush-era town as one of the set pieces and instead of destroying it after filming was complete, they moved the buildings to the town fairgrounds. Most of the buildings are now occupied by boutiques and shops. We were most interested in checking out the Haines Brewery. You wouldn’t think a town of just 2500 people could support a full-time brewery, but it was quite a busy place. Several local folks came in and got refills on their growlers while we were in the tasting room. We really liked the Lookout Stout, so we bought a growler of it to take back to the campground.
Our campground was right on the water, overlooking Portage Cove. We had a great view of the cove and the marina, and most importantly the sun was actually shining!
Since it was a Saturday night, the owners of the RV park organized a little crab bake. They bought about thirty Dungeness crabs from one of the fishermen down at the dock, seafood doesn’t get much fresher than that. We liked their innovative crab-cooking apparatus: a former beer keg on top of the burner from a turkey deep-fryer.
There was plenty of great food at the potluck, but the crab was definitely the highlight. We even learned how to shuck a crab without using one of those metal cracker-thingys. It was messy work, but worth it.
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