Our first stop on our cruise was Ketchikan, Alaska, the first city of Alaska. This is probably where your salmon comes from, being “The Salmon Capital of the World”. We were not there at the right season for the salmon runs though, but we did come on a day without rain which was fabulous.
Josh and I booked a shore excursion to fly over the Misty Fjords. Our plane was full, and the pilot asked Josh if he wanted to sit up front. Of course, Josh was thrilled. He wants to learn to fly, and loves watching pilots fly planes.
The flight was spectacular. It is so hard to capture Alaska with pictures or words. As you fly over the mountains and past waterfalls it’s almost too much beauty to take in. Every angle is beautiful, each direction you look is more wilderness and forests and mountains and sunlight or clouds. I wasn’t very happy with how my photos came out, being taken through the glass made them a little fuzzy, and they couldn’t capture the sheer scope or beauty of the landscape. You just have to go to Alaska and see it yourself.
After our flight, Josh and I walked through the city of Ketchikan (city is a term I use loosely in Alaska. Ketchikan’s population is only 8,000 in the summer). It is filled with touristy shops and a million jewelry stores. Every day of the summer there are four cruise ships docked at the port, and then when the winter rolls around everyone packs up a leaves. I think the winter population was something like 800.
(I’ve been told that Ketchikan’s population is 13,000. My apologies.)
They also had the historical sections of town, like Creek Street, which was filled with houses of ill-repute and bootlegger bars. The working girls were only stopped in the more recent history of 1953, although arrests for prostitution continued into the ’70s. Now Creek Street is filled with gift stores and you can watch the salmon swim upstream during salmon season.
In the evening, from our ship, we watched nature glide by and I got a few pictures of a bald eagle.
It looks absolutely stunning – and I believe you that the pictures don’t begin to capture the grandeur – still it looks amazing to me….might need to add Alaska to my list of places to visit….