Tuesday 19th May

We arrived at Ketchikan at around 0500 this morning. I was awake good and early and was up on the top deck (Deck 12) in time to see us tie up alongside. It was a beautiful morning with wall to wall blue sky.

We were booked on an excursion to go to the Tongass Rainforest Sanctuary, a private reserve located in the forested mountains of Herring Cove. We did a half mile rainforest walk with a very informative guide who pointed out many interesting thing to us like different plants, mosses and lichens; bear trails; scratch markings on trees where mother bears teach their cubs to climb and the very small creek where salmon actually return to spawn and die. It is hardly believable that salmon swim into such shallow water. The bears have not yet awoken from hibernation this far north so unfortunately we did not see any.

The rainforest felt almost primitive and we felt we had stepped back in time thousands of years. Although the trees were not that old, they were covered in lichen, moss etc that made them look as though they had existed in the time of the dinosaurs. When we exited the forest - (we only walked a tiny sample of it - the actual rainforest is the second largest in the world after the Amazon rainforest, and extends for 16.8 million acres) - we walked along a boardwalk over a marshy estuary where (allegedly) numerous bald headed eagles fly overhead. Needless to say, many were spotted yesterday!! I did get to see one fly over and it was huge. In an enclosure there was one eagle and one large owl, both recovering from wing injuries and unable to be let into the wild again. In another enclosure we were able to get close up to, and feed, reindeer.
We were then guided through the historic Herring Bay Lumber Company sawmill and the tour finished with a visit to a master totem pole carver carving a huge new totem pole. A very interesting morning.

The tour ended a couple of hours before we had to be back on board the ship so we browsed the numerous gift/souvenir ships and umpteen jewellers and strolled up Creek Street - - the well-known street where buildings are built on wooden stilts over water - before we returned to the ship by 1.30pm in time for departure for Juneau at 2pm.

The weather today has been glorious - mirror calm sea the same blue as the sky. We have been so lucky. Ketchikan averages 13ft of rain per year so being there today in the glorious warm sunshine was a bonus.

During the afternoon we spent time wandering around the ship, and around the pools on Deck 11 you would think we were on a Caribbean cruise, not far north in Alaska with snow covered mountains all around us. People are swimming and lying around on sunbeds. My thermals have remained in my suitcase!!