Day 6 – Ketchican
Ketchican is Alaska’s Southeastern-most major settlement and the last stop on our cruise through the Inside Passage. It’s located on an island that is mostly wilderness and is known for totem poles and lots of wildlife. Our main mission for the day was to see black bears in the wild. We’d pre-booked a private tour which had excellent reviews online so we were super excited!
After a couple of hours of cruising down the Inside Passage in the morning, we arrived into Ketchican at around 2pm. Our boat was delayed coming into port as there was a medical emergency on the ship in front of us (turns out somebody died in the hottub which sounds very unpleasant and we hope that their family/friends are ok) so we finally were allowed to disembark at around 2:30pm to start our tour.
Our tour guide was a pretty interesting guy, he’s from California where he toured with the likes of Tom Petty before moving to Alaska 20 or so years ago. He also genuinely loved all wildlife so was the perfect guide for us!
First up we drove through the south of Ketchican to Ketchican Creek where there’s a salmon ladder. It’s too early in the season for salmon right now but it’s pretty clever how they’ve built a bunch of switchbacks to make it easier for the salmon to swim to their breeding grounds. We also had a wander around a park that had ponds specifically for kids to fish in. They would fill them up with trout in the evening and then the kids can learn to fish the next day.
Next we stopped at Buggy Beach on the lookout for whales and seals. We were not successful but did find lots of crabs which were kind of adorable. At our next stop however, we were very successful! We pulled up in the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, right by where our guide lives, and were treated to samples of local jams. Some of them were from Salal berries which we didn’t think were edible and from spruce tips which tasted like citrus. We then walked around the corner and were greeted by a black bear and her two cubs! One of the cubs tried to climb a tree and then they disappeared off into the forest. But that wasn’t all, we then spent a long time watching 5 seals playing with salmon in the harbour as bald eagles flew above us.
Driving back to the town of Ketchican, we had our next wildlife encounter. James spotted a deer chilling at the side of the road so our guide swung round for us to take photos. We then drove back through to the north side of Ketchican, stopping on the way to sample some local salmon.
Our final stop on our tour was the Totem Bight State Historical Park. Here we were told some of the First Nations stories from our tour guide, learnt about the symbols that make up totem poles, saw the area where new Totem Poles are carved, and even got to go in to the clan house. It was really cool to see!
All in all, we couldn’t have had a better experience in Ketchican. Tim was awesome, we saw so much wildlife, and it was by far our favourite stop on the cruise.
Day 7 – Back to Vancouver!
Our final day was another sea day. We did pretty much nothing. Yoga in the morning, many naps, and reading our books. It was a pretty glorious way to spend our last day at sea before arriving at Vancouver first thing the next morning.
[Wildlife photo credits: James Green]