September 4, 2007

We planned to get up early and watch our arrival into Ketchikan. I hopped out of bed with the alarm and turned the TV onto the bridge camera station. Ketchikan was already in sight. We were ahead of schedule. The boat was still in the protected waters leading into town.

I quickly got ready and headed out on deck with my camera. It was a pretty morning, but cloudy and damp. I watched our arrival. We ate breakfast before leaving the boat.

We rented a car in Ketchikan and I was anxious to get away from the crowds and the tourist section of town. We were picked up by the rental car company and taken to our car. We drove out of town to the northern limit of the small road system, maybe 20 miles away. We drove by a debris pile from the demolition of a building that my department has been investigating complaints about the burning of the debris. No burning was taking place so I didn’t have to interrupt my vacation to investigate.

Our first stop was at a totem pole park. We beat most of the busses and tourists and had a peaceful walk through the rainforest to the totem poles near the beach. We visited a traditional native building and looked at the different totem poles.

We continued down to the end of the road and stopped at a small park. We hiked through the rainforest down to the beach and back. It was a peaceful location. We noticed numerous berry plants, but found few berries.

Our next stop took us to a lake, a couple mile inland. We didn’t let the rain get in our way. We hiked all the way around the large lake, a distance of over a mile. We crossed a couple of inlet streams that were choked full of salmon and the outlet stream had a fair number of the aging fish as well. The water in the lake occasionally boiled with splashing fish. We were on full bear alert, carefully making noise and being observant. Surprisingly there was no sign of bears in spite of the abundance of easily captured fish. The hike in the rain with the fish, mergansers, and potential bears was exhilarating.

We noticed a sign identifying an inundation zone should a dam upstream burst. We decided to go see the larger manmade lake. We drove up the narrow road, but had to stop before arriving at the lake due to a temporary road closure. This did give us a chance to see a large wooden pipeline, presumable the community’s water supply line, apparently still in use. Wooden pipelines were common at one point in history, but not so common now.

Returning to town, we found a local restaurant outside of the tourist district for lunch. We headed out of town the other direction, but we were running out of time. We took a quick tour of another totem pole park before returning the car. The rental car company dropped us off in the tourist district and we took a quick hike along the boardwalk. We checked out a few of the stores. A seal was chasing salmon in the water along the boardwalk.

We returned to the boat, watched our departure from deck, ate dinner, and gambled in the casino.