Another Visit to Ketchikan, AK

Airship Goes to Alaska

Last night's sunset in Kasaan:

We left Kasaan early this morning and headed toward Ketchikan. The weather was beautiful.

As we got most of the way across Clarence Strait, we started seeing humpbacks in the distance, off to our right. Pretty soon I heard a very close blow, then another, and what do you know…there are two of them, fairly close to the boat (of course). I put us in neutral and we sat and watched as they paralleled us for a bit and then dove.

Approaching Ketchikan…would you look at this insane weather?!?!

Just put 'er there between those two behemoth cruise ships, thanks:

We're docked at the Casey Moran city dock, right in front of town. It's fun! There are of course a ton of people out because the weather is perfect (not to mention the three giant ships full of tourists), so there's quite a bit of pedestrian action on the boardwalk next to the boat. (It was fun when we came in to the transient dock…there was an older man and his wife standing up on the boardwalk watching me dock the boat, and I heard him say to his wife "She's doing a helluva job there!") 🙂

Here we are at the dock. The tide was lowish when we got in, but now that it's getting close to high tide we're almost eye level with the peds on the boardwalk:

We headed over to the Bar Harbor Restaurant for lunch. We both got some killer halibut fish tacos and a beer, and then went wandering around town.

We stopped in at Soho Coho to see if Ray was around (and to buy a few things), and then went into Parnassus Books (a great independent bookstore here in Ketchikan) for a couple more books. Loot, below:

The raven and the humpback are enamel zipper pulls by William Spear. 

Another shot of the Chief Johnson totem pole, next door to the book store. The Chief Johnson totem pole is 55 ft. tall and carved out of one single western red cedar log. The original version stood from 1901 to 1982. This replacement was carved by Israel Shotridge, Tlingit carver and member of the Tongass Tribe, and erected in 1989.

Kevin has a conference call in the morning at 8am, then we have to run down to Frontier Shipping to pick up a package, and then our plan is to fuel up and head out to Foggy Bay tomorrow afternoon and then on to Prince Rupert on Friday morning. The weather window for Thursday and Friday to cross Dixon Entrance looks good, so I think we're gonna take advantage of that window and get that crossing behind us. 

The cruise ships will all be gone by 6pm, which is good, because this one here would be blocking our sunset:

Here's today's route from Kasaan to Ketchikan, about 30 nautical miles: