North to Alaska - Day 3

Friday, September 4

We arrived nice and early in Ketchikan, our first stop in Alaska. It's an interesting town as it's only 3 blocks wide but about 5 kilometres long as it hugs the coast of Revillagigedo island. We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day in a town where it rains on average 250 days a year! The town owes its existence to salmon, as it was founded to process the tonnes of salmon that were caught from the waters around it.

Being so compact made it easy to walk around and see the sights in town, which mainly consisted of jewellery shops and souvenir shops catering to the cruise ships. However, in Ketchikan's 100 year plus history, a many of the wooden buildings survive and they are painted in different colours. All around town were historical marker boards giving the history of the area or the building, and these were very informative.

Apart from its fishing history, Ketchikan was notorious as a frontier town in the 1920's when brothels and booze running gave it a bad/good reputation, depending on your viewpoint! The most famous street here is Creek Street, where the buildings are built on pylons - it is also the most photographed street in the US.

One end of Creek Street

The other end of Creek Street

Most of the buildings in the above pics were either brothels or bars, and during Prohibition the boats bringing the booze to town would hide from the law and load the grog from beneath the buildings. Today would have been impossible as it was low tide! Many of the brothels operated until 1954 when prostitution was finally outlawed, and now most of them are tourist shops. The creek had a real fishy smell as the salmon swim up this creek to spawn and then die, and the seagulls were having a feast on the carcasses.

We wandered out of the downtown area to the Totem Heritage Centre where we learnt some more about the traditions and meaning of the totem poles.

On our way back to the downtown area we passed a fish hatchery and a fish ladder, which helps the salmon move upstream at a point in the River where the water flow is too strong for them to swim against.

The fish ladder

Salmon spawning in the River

We sailed out of Ketchikan early in the afternoon to catch the tide as we headed further north, and loved seeing the float planes taking off and landing around us. We even sailed past the airport and saw a plane landing on it, something you don't always see from a cruise ship!

A view of Ketchikan as we sail north

After a pommy themed lunch we attended a talk by the naturalist on board who told us about the different types of whales and dolphins in Alaskan waters at this time, and that later in the day we would have a good chance to see some. He wasn't wrong as we sighted a number of dolphins and whales, with one whale coming quite close to the ship as he (or she) dived beside the ship. The scenery was magnificent, the water like a millpond, and as the sun was setting it capped off a fantastic day.

Whale watching on the Promenade deck

An Alaskan sunset

 

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