Day 29 Ketchikan, Alaska

 Our last port of call in beautiful Alaska is Ketchikan.  There are five cruise ships docked here today and we are relegated to the 'boondocks" - a 15 minute drive from downtown Ketchikan.  Where we are docked is brand new and has been developed to accomodate the numerous cruise ships that dock here each year.  Although there is nothing here at the moment, my guess is that it will be developed further over the coming years.

We arrived at Ketchikan around 11am so most of the tours were a lot later than usual.  Our tour today was the lumberjack show and we boarded the bus to take us into town around midday.  One of our friends recommended this show and I have to say it was a great recommendation.  I kept thinking of my dad as I watched the lumberjacks showing their different wood chop techniques.  Dad loved watching the wood chops at the Ekka.

The show went for well over an hour with just six lumberjacks.  There was a lot of audience participation with the lumberjacks being divided into two teams and the audience having to cheer or boo for the team you were relegated to.  Half the audience had to cheer the Canadian Team and other half the American team.  We were Canadian.  It was a lot of fun and great to watch.

After the lumberjack show we decided to take a walk around downtown Ketchikan that is a very pretty town that hugs the side of a snow capped hill.  I noticed that most of the houses had very long staircases to climb to reach their houses.  Spring is more evident here as a lot of the trees and bushes are flowering profusely.  The other places we visited in Alaska did not have that same re-growth.

There was a shuttle bus running every 30 minutes to take us back to the ship and as we just missed one, we decided to go and have something to eat.  We found a great bar/restaurant close by and were quickly seated.  The menu was enticing so we settled on a Salman Taster as a starter followed by (local) fish and chips for me and a hamburger for Philip.  When the waitress brought the three dishes to the table we almost keeled over.  They were huge meals!  My battered fish and chips had six (6!!!!) pieces of fish and the chips were massive potato wedges.  If I had known the meal was so big I would never have ordered it because the Salmon Sampler was also a meal in itself with a large piece of smoked salmon with naan bread and accompaniments.

Tonight we are having dinner with another aussie couple that we have mated up with.  They are great company and as they are doing the same APT tour in Canada that we are doing, we will be seeing a lot more of them. Tomorrow is a day at sea before we make our final docking at Vancouver.  It's too sad to think about.