Travel Tuesday - Ketchikan, Alaska - On Wednesday

Ketchikan's claim to fame, "The Salmon Capital of the World"





I don't know what happen to this picture but it's too hard to fix in blogger, so I'm just keeping it as it is. I tried to rotate it before I uploaded it so maybe I changed the dimensions or something. Anyway, that's me in front of a totem ple.
This place was really cool and a must see if you ever get to Ketchikan. It's one of my favorite things we did. You take a funicular railway up to the Westmark Cape Fox Lodge (which is beautiful) and if you have time eat lunch there, the views are wonderful. They have this set of totem poles out back. We stopped and talked to one of the young girls working there and she told us when we go back into town to try the Orca corn, which is popcorn, she said it was the best. So we got the kettle corn, it was so good.


This was when I got back on the ship after a day in Ketchikan. I look so lovely from all of the rain. Ketchikan is known for their rainfall. The average rainfall is about 160 inches a year(that's more than 13 ft) and it has topped 200 inches.

Okay, I had good intentions to do Travel Tuesday yesterday but I woke up with a little bit of yuckiness (my sweetie says yuckiness is not a word). But I'm feeling alot better today. So between the yuckiness and going to a work thing, my day was shot. So we'll just pretend it's Tuesday today.

Now on to Ketchikan. Like Juneau, Ketchikan is surrounded by wilderness and is without a highway or rail connection to the rest of the world. Everything and everyone comes and go by air or sea. Ketchikan is between mountains and a narrow band of sea. It is rustic, picturesque and very busy. It was only about 100 years ago that White men discovered what the Indians had known for centuries and that was that fishing is good around Ketchikan. Ketchikan became known as the salmon capital of the world. Ketchikan is also noted for the world's largest collections of totem poles. Each totem pole tells a story and you can go to Totem Bight Historical Park to see a good collection of them. But honestly, there are totem poles all over Ketchikan. One of the most exciting things I seen in Ketchikan was the salmon swimming upstream. It was a real thrill to see this happening in person. I tried to get pictures but you can't really see the salmon in the stream. Alot of them do not make it and it is so interesting.

As you can tell in my Travel Tuesdays these past few weeks, I loved Alaska! This was our last stop in Alaska and I felt like I seen just the tiniest bit of what Alaska had to offer. I didn't get to see Glacier Bay and go inland, so I hope I get to go back someday and see more. It is a huge state. Our cruise started off in Vancouver and I didn't mean to skip this wonderful city but I didn't spend alot of time there but my impression of it was that it was a wonderful cosmopolitan city. Next week our cruise heads into San Francisco and let me tell you what a thrill it was to come into this great city by ship. I'll talk more about that next week. Thanks for traveling to Alaska with me!