Ketchikan

This is the only stop along the way that we have never been to.

The  area where we docked was right in town.  These pictures were all taken from the ship.

As you can see there are lots of places to shop.

We were greeted by a moose as we disembarked.

The sign says that Ketchikan was the first town in Alaska.

There is this nice sculpture on the dock depicting he people who settled Ketchikan.

There is also a very tall rain gauge that indicates how much rain Ketchikan gets in a year.

Wayne had booked a king salmon fishing tournament and I went on a wildlife tour.  Here are my pictures from the Wildlife tour.

Our bus load split into four groups.  We all had to go through what we had brought and get rid of any food stuffs because we didn’t want to attract the bears.  Then we started up a nice gravel path through the woods.

This is a rainforest area so there was lots of moss, etc. growing on the trees and lots of ferns and flowers on the forest floor.

This was an unusual burled tree.

Growing on the side of many trees is something they call bear bread because the bears like to eat it.

It is some kind of fungus and this is what it looks like up close.

This tree had grow over something that eventually rotted out.

This was a bear trail through the woods.  Although we didn’t see them, there was lots of bear scat on our trail.

This suspended bridge went somewhere that we didn’t go.

In addition to the wildlife tour, this park  also has a zip line.

More of the flowers on the forest floor.

This is a bear training tree.   It stands out alone from the others.  The mother bear chases her cubs until they run up the tree.  You can see all the bear claw marks on the tree.

This large claw mark was probable made by a male bear who was trying to get to the baby bears.  The mother won’t have anything to do with the males until all her cubs are gone.

We were told that this was not a good place for a bear to hibernate but that it may have been used for one season.  It was too close to the trail.

This is another bear trail.  It was muddy and you could see the recent tracks.

This pretty flower is the Northern Rice Root which is also known as the Chocolate Lilly.

We saw this eagle up in a tree.

 

We came to an area where we were walking on a raised platform over a marshy area looking towards the river.  When the salmon come up this river to spawn the bears come in droves to eat the salmon.  This is a safe area to view tem from.  Unfortunately the salmon were not spawning.

More bear tracks in the marshy area.

We spotted an eagles nest across the river.  See if you can spot it.

The also have some rescue animals here.  These are reindeer which are not indigenous to this area.  We hand fed them lettuce.

They also had a rescued bald eagle.

And they had a great horned owl which was perched on one of the trainer’s arm.

Our next stop was the woodcarver’s shop.  The carver is a native born Alaskan Indian and he is working on a totem of a salmon.  His work is well known.

This is the young woman who was our guide.  There was also a young man bringing up the rear in case of bears.

This was a beautiful wood carved sculpture that was in the gift shop.

On the way back to the ship we went past this beautiful lake with a fishing boat on it.

There was also an eagle flying past.

I am going to do a separate blog for Wayne’s fishing trip and the rest of the day.