Alaska Southeast State Fair, Saturday, August 1, 2001

While in Haines, we were lucky enough to be at the RV park when they had a pot-luck dinner with fresh, off the boat, dungeness crabs! Wow was that ever good! We each had a whole crab to ourselves. It had been years since I had eaten fresh crab! We were also lucky to have been in Haines when the Southeast Alaska State Fair was scheduled. Nearly everyone in town goes to the fair and close their businesses on those three days.

This is the entrance to the fair, where the entrance fee was just $10.00.

This is the Men's Ax Throwing Contest.

The women also have the same competition. Some contestants carry their own ax. This lady had an especially long handled one.

This man won this contest, some sort of cable race where he runs over many logs and jumps over the last, huge log, placing the cable underneath and then jumps back to connect the cable into a circle and runs back to connect it all to a live tree. The cable he is carrying weighs about 50 lbs.

This is another view of him jumping from log to log.

This is the Women's Log Cutting Contest and this young girl won it. She is wearing some sort of protective pants.

This was called the Jack and Jill Cross Cutting Contest. This is a two man cross cut saw, and yes, there is a man and woman doing the cutting together.

This was the really fun part. This is the Log Rolling Contest and was a double elimination tournament.

This fella still on the log took second or third place, I believe.

I think the fella in the dark shirt was the eventual winner.

Here even he goes in the drink!

The person on the left is a woman. There were two women who competed in this contest.

This woman defeated several men and went on to take second or third place.

This is unusual to see--- a two man chain saw! They could really take down a big tree with this one!

On the fairgrounds was this set of Dawson City, made for the movie, White Fang, which was filmed in Haines.

They had lots of entertainment at the fair and this one for me was the most enjoyable. It is a bunch of Tlingit tribe native american dancers who did their ancient dances as well as some newer ones. The fella in the blue was the MC and his headress has Irmine pelts coming down the back.

This is one of the men, dancing while he is drumming. They would tell us what the dances meant and what was happening in the dance.

By design, the men dance much more animated and the women dance in more subdued fashion, swaying and using their hands to the drum beat and chant.

Here you can see the MC talking about the group and his culture. They are trying hard to preserve their language and dances, as well as costumes. He was very engaging and invited anyone in the audience to join in the dances. They all really had a great spirit about them!

Here is who I call, "the Wolf Man". He has a wolf pelt on him. You can see that behind him is a lady from the audience, as is a man beside him.