8/12/2013 – Ketchikan

On Monday morning we arrived in Ketchikan at about 9:30. We had the morning to walk around town before taking a float plane out to Misty Fjords National monument. This is the view coming into town. Lots of float planes in the water.

The cruise ships dock right up next to the island that Ketchikan is on. It’s a fairly big town, but there is no way to drive to it, all of the cars and busses either came over on a ferry or were shipped in on a freighter. Here is a view of town from our ship.

There is a square right in the center of town with a statue that we could see from the cruise ship.

We decided to get off the ship and take a short walk to Creek Street. The tide was pretty low when we got there. Here are a few pictures.

This is the “salmon ladder” where they swim upstream to spawn.

We then did a little shopping in downtown Ketchikan, and headed back to the ship for some lunch before our float plane trip.

After lunch we got a bus to Taquan Air where our pilot Jim boarded us into a small float plane. It was just the 4 of us and the pilot. He then took us out past the town of Ketchikan and into the Misty Fjords National Monument. We flew around the mountains and lakes for a while. We also landed in a beautiful emerald lake and got out onto the floats to look around.

Flying past our ship on the way out

Here is the local high school. Their competitors are so far away that they fly to their games.

Here are some pictures along our flight.

Here is a waterfall coming down a mountain. The waterfalls are fed from lakes at the top of the mountains.

Her are some pictures that our pilot took when we landed in the lake.

Here we are back inside the plane.

It is hard to get a perspective of the size of the mountains and lakes in Misty Fjords but there were other planes flying below us that looked like little white specs. We flew by the famous Eddystone on the way out of the Monument. This is the remaining core of a volcano that has eroded.

After our float plane ride we headed back into Ketchikan and the fog which had been over the city had lifted so we got a few more pictures.

We pulled out of port about 5:45 headed for the inside passage. We had dinner and watched the landscape slide by.

#Alaska2013