We were up at 4 and loaded by 6. The hoppers were out in force and tried their best to hop into our boats. I probably did some damage to their population as I tried to sponge them out of my boat. Finally I just gave up and let them come along for the ride. We paddled between two islands and found the spot where the black oyster catchers were congregating, They are another one of my favorite birds.
Black Oystercatchers.
Today was a repeat of yesterday. Looks like we are going to have smooth paddling all the way to Haines. That changed when the tide switched and we felt like we were moving thru molasses. We saw the town, but it seemed like it took us for ever to land.
We paddled into the harbor and tired to call our friend,Ne Ne, but she did not answer the first time. The data plan that we had purchased outside of Juneau had expired and we had gotten our cell coverage returned. Don gave them a call and told them what had happened. They apologized and said they would give us a day of credit and supposedly after they fixed it, all we had to do was to turn off our phone and when we turned it back on we would have a day of data and cell service. So with a little hesitation we turned it off and then turned it on. Yikes, the same thing happened. We lost our cell coverage so now our friend could not return our call. Don checked out a trailer park not far from the harbor and they had a couple of tent sites left. We paddled over and carried our gear up the banks to the site. Don left to go to the library and to scype our son Jeff on our iPad. We were hoping he could find out what was going on with the phone service. That did work after they realized that they kept signing us up for the wrong program. Once again they apologized and gave us a day of credit. Meanwhile NeNe our friend got the message, but when she tried to return our call she could not get hold of us. She came looking for us, fortunately Haines is rather small, so after making several stops, she found us at the library. It was a lot of fun to catch up on the latest events that she has been doing. She is a traveling vet in the South East. She invited us over to her new house to have dinner, do laundry and take showers. The evening went too quickly and soon we were back to our tent, wondering if tomorrow was going to be the last paddle of this part of the expedition. The weather forecast was calling for wind. Not much one can do so off to bed we went,
Nautical miles traveled 14.7