Ketchikan

Heading southwest out of Ketchikan past Annette Island on the right, our ship sails out toward the sunny Pacific on the way back to Seattle.

Salmon canneries kept Ketchikan’s residents employed for decades, including Elaine’s mom as a teenager. The fish were big, but not quite this big.

Elaine and I stand on the end of Creek Street’s boardwalk above the rapids. We wore jackets, but actually saw the sun in Ketchikan that day!

A Creek Street store hung some of their t-shirts out for viewing. Eagle, bear, moose, whale and wolf — there is still plenty of wildlife to be found around Ketchikan!

Ketchikan’s historic district was lively during the 1920s until Prohibition and the banning of prostitution shut it down. Revitalized in the 1970s and 80s, it’s colorful shops now host tourists on the wooden boardwalks.

The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show finishes with log rolling contests, where the last man on the log wins. There is a lot of splashing, running forward and backward, and cheering by the crowd of Ketchikan visitors.

Our favorite activity in Ketchikan is the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, where competitors for the American and Canadian “teams” try to chop logs, saw slices, and climb poles the fastest. Plenty of corny jokes and cheering, since half of the crowd is on the American side and half on the Canadian.

Arriving in Ketchikan, our cruise ship docked next to the harbor full of fishing boats. Elaine’s grandfather was a fisherman in Ketchikan in the 1920s after arriving from Norway.