Alaska Cruise: Ketchikan (Day 6)

Known as "Alaska's First City", Ketchikan is the first major community travelers come to as they travel north.  Founded as a fishing camp, Ketchikan is a bustling community backed by forested hills and surrounded by a waterway busy with float planes, fishing boats, ferries and cruise ships.  It has the largest collection of totem poles in the world and thus also known as the Totem Pole capital of the world!

It was another beautiful sunny day when we woke up in Ketchikan.  It was a gifted day as Ketchikan's yearly rain downfall is often as much as 13 feet!!!  We were so blessed with the good weather through-out the time we ashore.
 

View from our room balcany when we woke up in Ketchikan

Originally, we were thinking to take a taxi or hop on public bus to get around in Ketchikan, mainly to visit the Potlatch Park and Creek Street.  However, we ended up purchased the "Ketchikan Highlights Express" shore excursion through the shore excursion desk on ship at last minutes.  Ketchikan is the port in Alaska that has the shortest time ashore (not counting Victoria port in Canada) and we wish not to have the same experience as Juneau where we were rushing through the city visit and shopping.

As the "Ketchikan Highlights Express" departs only at 9am, we went down from ship to do some shopping first at 8am to capitalize the time we had in Ketchikan.  I found that Ketchikan offered the cheapest shopping among the 3 ports of call in Alaska (Skayway, Juneau & Ketchikan).  BTW, remember to pick up the shopping guide from the Seattle terminal during the embarkation day, there were amazing discount coupon inside that you can get some souvenirs at very cheap price and some freebies.

"Ketchikan Highlights Express" brought us to Potlatch park - a fully recreated 19th century native Alaska Village, where the traditions and culture of the Native peoples were showcased. 

Beautifully carved totems, tribal houses, carving center, vintage vehicle and antique cars were among the things that we saw and visited.
 

One of the tribal home

Inside the main tribal house

 

Inside the Carving Center 

Vintage Vehicles & Antique Cars

We passed by some of the city's colorful landmarks on our return to town, including the creek street.  However, this tour does not make any stop in the city.  According to the driver, he can't make a stop and drop us at Creek Street.  We were driven back to the pick-up point at the city.  We then took a 15min walk to the Creek Street, explored the Ketchikan on foot along the way, before we returned to ship.

We went to Empire Restaurant for a course lunch instead of usual buffet lunch at La Playa.  And for dinner, it was a dress up dinner night this day.  We have pretty good food as usual. 

The girls had a pretty good time that night prior to return to the stateroom for the surprise towel creation.  :)

Party time during dinner

Girls danced on the dance floor

Creative towel surprise of the day