Baranof Hot Springs

We had been told by many people that this is a must stop.  And having spent time in Japan we are always up for a hot spring adventure.  This place is no secret, even Michener wrote about it in his book ALASKA.  Even though it is popular, we found it to be one of the highlights of our summer.  We got there late enough in the year that the dock fees stopped on the second day.  There are semi natural pools right next to the falls.  A set of three free private bath tubs with windows that look out over harbor and if you situate yourself just right you can view the falls.  However, the hot springs are only part of the picture.

Obviously we mentioned the falls are pretty nice, even though they add a tricky current to the docking equation.  There is a nature trail that leads up through the woods to the natural pools and also the lake that feeds the falls.  The lake is supposedly full of trout.  We didn’t bring our poles so we are not sure but the views of the lake were pretty spectacular.

The bird life in the harbor was pretty spectacular and the sea lions were busy feeding on Dolly Varden.  One day we had three very big ones fishing right next to us while we were in the cockpit.

As we said in the last post we arrived late and after our baths, kind of vegged out for the night.  The next day was rainy but we donned our foul weather gear and went up to check out the trails.  There is a small community of cabins around the harbor and a privately run fishing lodge as well so lots of boardwalk to stretch the legs after a few days of confinement on the boat.  Despite the rain we enjoyed ourselves so much that we opted for one more day.  This day the sun was out and Mark headed out for the natural springs. 

There is a salt marsh just across the harbor from the dock which we also wanted to check out but it can only be accessed by dinghy near high tide.  We left a little too early and had a white water rafting experience as we went in.  We were so early that when we went to leave we got swept backward.  So we waited 15 minutes and tried again.  We made it further than the first time but still got swept backwards and flushed back into the marsh.  After another 20 minutes we tried again and we managed to keep crawling through back to the main harbor.  What a day in our own water park!

While in the dinghy we decided to drive over and see what the commercial lodge looked like.  They closed that day so we didn’t go ashore but from the water the lodge looked nice.  We had met the last tenants of the year from Texas the day before and they seemed pretty happy with it.

Pictures to be posted later