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08/10/2007: "Ketchikan, AK"
Arriving in Ketchikan we learned that it is both the salmon capital of the world as well as the rain capital. They harvest and ship all five types of salmon while enduring 150 inches of rain a year. For a second day the good weather followed us. Nick and I were stripping off layers as we took a morning tour through the Tongass Rainforest. This is considered a temperate rainforest since it doesn’t have the tropical temperatures we associate with them. Still, it supports a wider variety of life than the Amazon. As we walked along our guide taught us about the fauna and animal life. Along a salmon stream, we expected to see plenty of bear as their primary food source flopped around in the shallow waters. Turns out that they don’t like the sunshine, makes them too hot in their black fur coats.
The town is the fourth largest in Alaska and still holds a lot of the charm it had 100 years ago. However, the daily cruise ship dump of tourists triples their population. Historic areas like Creek Street is an elevated boardwalk with old false-front buildings like Dolly’s brothel. The have the largest collection of totem poles both old and new. We got a chance to see an artisan working on one. The mountain outside of town is 3,000 feet and used as a weather indicator. As the locals say, “If you can see the summit, it is going to rain. If you can’t, it is raining.”
With all of these towns along the inside passage their economic dependency on the cruise ships is obvious. Ketchikan has 42 jewelry shops and they are working on an ordinance to limit them. All shops in town contain souvenirs from cheap little totem poles to precious gemstones and are usually crowded with cruisers. In the winter when the ships aren’t visiting, the shops all close up.
Today we are traveling to Victoria BC. Nick and I have an evening whale watching excursion that we hope produces a good look at the killers of the sea.