Our Visit in Ketchikan, AK

As you come into Ketchikan the first thing you notice is cruise ships.  There are usually anywhere from 3 to 10 of them at a time!  So the sleepy town can have up to an additional 10,000 visitors from the cruise ships on a busy day!!  It’s interesting that all of the locals know the cruise ship schedules at any time.  And we found that the deep downtown area really caters to the cruise ship tourist.

When we arrived there were 3 cruise ships in the harbor and a multitude of float planes buzzing by.

 

 

We were able to figure out the local bus schedule and you could either pay the $1.00 bus fare each time you got on the bus, or you could buy a day pass for $2.00.  So the four of us got on the bus and headed towards downtown.  The guys hopped off the bus to pick up some marine supplies and Lynn & I continued on to see some of the downtown area.

Lynn had some friends who had been to Ketchikan before and suggested we visit a section of town called “Creek Street”.  This street used to be the red light district but is now a tourist area with specialty stores.  We were able to see some really wonderful native artwork galleries and took a tour of one of the oldest brothel homes on the street.

 

On the way back to me the guys for lunch we ran across this wonderful downtown garden which was squeezed in between two buildings.

 

We had a very nice lunch at a local hamburger restaurant which was kind of like our Johnny Rockets (old 50’s style hamburger diner). 

My Dad told us about a candy shop that he knew Bruce would like – it’s called Ketchi Candies and located downtown near the cruise ship terminals.  He was right – Bruce loved it!

 

It seemed to us that Tongass Trading Company seemed to have a separate shop everywhere we turned!  Both in the downtown area and out near the marinas where we are moored.  They have tourist shops, hardware, marine, and sporting goods.  I think we visited each one for various items we were looking for.  At first we didn’t know that they were all Tongass stores, but we started noticing that the employees we had seen in different stores!  They were all very helpful and yes they did get quite a bit of our money.  The out of state fishing licenses were very expensive!  Including the salmon tag is was $250 – it took Bruce a few days to finally commit to spending the money and buying the license! LOL!