Alaskan Adventures Day 4: Waking up in Ketchikan

Overnight, we entered a new time zone and pushed our clocks back an hour. Good thing, because we had to be on the dock at 650am for our kayak adventure! We got up nice and early and were able to see a gorgeous Alaskan sunrise. Talk about a welcome view.

We grabbed breakfast and went to turn in papers to take advantage of this great service where they take your bags right from your stateroom to the airport and check them to your final destination. There were some stipulations, including that your flight needed to leave at 11am or later. Well, ours leaves at 1059am. This means we can’t use the service! We just laughed at the situation and accepted our luggage-dragging fate.

We kissed Syd goodbye and sent her with Nana, then we were off to our kayaking adventure. On the way out, we got a picture with a pretend moose. Ironically, they told us there are no moose in Ketchikan on one of our tours. We disembarked and they scanned our room keys I told you about earlier. We found someone holding a sign that matched our passes. As a note, we booked our tours online ahead of time. This gave us a discount and didn’t leave us having to think about it during the cruise. The itinerary was set. This also helped us budget, because we paid for them ahead of time.

We got on a tour bus with a group going to the same location but planning to zipline. 5 of us chose kayaking. The bus driver gave us some great history and information about Ketchikan. One interesting tidbit is that there are three main roads and two of them are built on stilts overwater. We had a safety brief, ate some random berries from a bush after our guide pointed them out, and got into our tandem kayaks. We have kayaked many times, but this was nice! Seats with backs and pedals to steer – we have been missing out! We headed out into the ocean and didn’t get even ten minutes into the journey before we spotted a few seals. Soon thereafter, we saw some sea lions. They were hilarious: rolling, playing, snorting water at us, and following our kayaks from a distance. Minutes later, we began seeing bald eagles. There are tons in the area. Those with a white head are mature and a dark head are still young. Here’s a fun fact for you – they mate while falling through the air to the ground. How’s that for exciting?

I am not going to lie – the whole time I was absolutely terrified an orca would pop up and I would get eaten. It is a perfectly unreasonable fear. I did hope to see a humpback, but there were no whale spottings on the kayak adventure. The weather was absolutely perfect, and we simply took in the sights. We went on the early morning trip and I would highly recommend that. It was less crowded, the animals were active, and we had time left to explore the city after. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking for this adventure.

Sea lions!

After our tour, we went to town and explored. The salmon are currently running up stream to lay their eggs and we saw many swimming around. Apparently, they lay their eggs and then die so there were many dead ones floating about. There is an area called “Creek Street” where many shops, restaurants, and photo ops can occur. Our kayak guide recommended The Fish House for their beer and food, since it was only 11, we decided to try a flight of beer from the brewery in Denali. We both liked the last beer the best!

Creek Street

A salmon swimming. 

Now it was time to meet up with the rest of our group.  They took the duck boat adventure and Sydney slept through the whole thing. Classic Syd the kid! We went and did some shopping and then it was time to head back to the ship. We sat on the top deck and watched the seaplanes take off. Those pilots are crazy! They fly right over boats and feet from our cruise ship! Troy was in heaven watching, but I know he wishes he was flying one (he has his private pilot’s license, if you didn’t know)!

Soon, our ship headed out to sea again. Sydney went back to the tree house at her request and enjoyed some tricycle time and then got dressed like a cowgirl. We took part in some boat activities like trivia and listening to the bands. One thing we have noticed is that nothing is really geared toward 20 & 30-somethings, luckily we are cool with oldies, too.

Syd cycling around.