On the way into Ketchikan, we passed by homes along the way.  I think this guy gets the prize for having the most derelict boats in his yard

One, two

three, four, five

And these aren’t exactly runabouts either.  Here was another boat we saw up on the shore

Long way up

Makes me wonder how the heck they got so far up on the shore.  It’s not like they have a tide here and I’m pretty sure Alaska doesn’t get hurricanes or tsunamis.

Well we had a real short day at Ketchikan but we still had an excursion planned.  It was a Duck Tour.  Now keep in mind we were taking our Duck Tour a few days after that devastating Duck Tour accident in Missouri

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMz2l7lMmk.

But it was going to be a beautiful calm day so we figured we’d be ok.

We had a little time before the Duck tour so we checked out the town.

Welcome!

This is apparently a very famous sign  and everyone who comes here takes a picture of it.  I didn’t want to disappoint any one, so here you go .  This town, again, was more touristy than Juneau.  See the guy in the orange?

Street Crossing Guard

We were told on the ship when we went to one of the information talks they had, that on this street, you NEVER cross where there isn’t a cross walk.  They had a few of these guys stationed on this street and if you tried to cross without being at the cross walk they yelled and whistled at you to not cross there.  Gary and I have always been law-abiding citizens so we made sure to cross only at the cross walk (that was of course after I forgot we weren’t supposed to and I got yelled and whistled at by a couple of those guys  .  I’m old….I forget things easily)  They also had this really cool statue there 

It had a plaque telling what it was for, probably about first settlers and all, but I didn’t get a picture of it.  You’ll just have to go there yourself to see what it’s all about.

Finally, our Duck Boat arrived.

On the Duck Boat

Pretty empty….I wonder why?  They had blankets over your seat so you could cover up your legs if you wore shorts.  I made use of that so we were all comfy cozy.  The guy in the yellow shirt in the picture was our captain.  He lives in Florida and just comes up here for the summer to work.  This was his first time doing this.  (I hoped secretly he knew how to drive this dang thing and he knew what the heck he was doing).  The girl in the blue sweatshirt lives and goes to college in Arizona and she too is up here for the first time working.  (I secretly hoped she knew where the life jackets were, just in case).   So they gave us a tour of Ketchikan and showed us Dolly’s House

Dolly’s house

It was a brothel back in the day.  Dolly even came out and waved at us as we drove by.  When they finally drove into the water, they did a little harbor cruise first

Harbor Cruise

You can see there is quite a low cloud bank today.

Low clouds

Zorro, that’s a pretty boat

So the harbor was quite big with a few working boats slipped there.  They took us past a couple of fish processing plants were we saw some BIG harbor seals sitting out front waiting for leftovers.  We saw quite a few eagles too.

bald eagle

Once we were out of the harbor, we saw some water sprays but didn’t see any actual whales.  I think they might have been camera-shy.  We only saw one tail and it was much to quick to take a picture of.  We did see this float plane taking off 

I was surprised as to how many of them there were up there but I guess when you life in a desolated spot that you can only get to by air or sea, those planes would come in pretty handy.

After the Duck Boat ride, which went off without a hitch, we decided to check out the town a little more.  We took a walk over by Dolly’s house

Creek Street

and walked along Creek Street.  They had a lot of little shops you could go into (are you sensing a theme here?).

Creek Street creek

Plus there was the creek that you walked along.  And many totem poles.    They had these all over the place.  I guess they are pretty big out here.  They were even in Seattle.

Once we were all done sight-seeing, we headed back to the ship, and a drink.  This stop was one of our shorter stops.  The next stop would be Victoria BC, Canada!