June 4, 2022- Ketchikan, AK

Today we didn’t get into port until 11:15am, so we were able to sleep in a little. While the girls slept Nana, I went up to Cove to have a coffee. Then we came back downstairs and got the kids moving. We went up to Cabanas again for breakfast, then 1 more quick stop at the room to gather all of our stuff before heading down to the meeting place for our tour.

The Ketchikan airport is outside of the city. We were told you have to take a ferry from town to get to the airport. The ferry ride is 7 minutes from town to the Island with the airport. There are no roads in or out of the airport.

Alaska and Delta are the big airlines that fly out of Ketchikan. The other are smaller planes.

We got off the ship and went onto a charter bus for the ride out to the rainforest sanctuary. It was about a ¾ mile walk through the forest area. We saw some fallen trees and moss. The walk was a little slow through the area.

At the end was board walk where we could see a salmon hatchery. We learned the fishermen pay into the hatchery to make sure there is always salmon that they will be able to fish later. The hatchery will sell off egg or deposit the eggs in different locations for hatching. They do keep some to have hatch there, so they will have salmon that come back. The ones that hatch at the hatchery stay there for a year and then are released into the water to keep growing until it is time for them to lay eggs.

Then we stopped in the Alaska Raptor Satellite Center. We got to see 3 birds.

Jake a Red Tail Hawk. Physically he is fine. When he was born a kid took him out of the nest and kept him in a closet for 4 months, feeding him people food. Finally, the parents found the bird and called the raptor center. Once at the raptor center when Jake was shown live prey he got scared and flew off into a different part of the cage. Since he can’t hunt live prey, he can’t be released.

Sitka the Bald Eagle was much large than I thought they would be. He had been eating on a moose carcass when a car drove by he flew out in front of the car. He has a hole I his wing and is missing some claws on his feet. His accuracy at catching live prey was less than 50%, so they couldn’t release him. Healthy Eagles have an 80% success rate when hunting.

The last was a Falcon. They found the falcon at a gas station and it had a hurt wing and was no longer able to fly. The girl said the raptor center rescues about 200 birds a year.

We got to see a few totem poles. The man who makes them was not working today, but we got to look around and see his completed work.

Then of course you get sent through the gift shop. It would have been nice to walk a little faster through the woods to spend more time looking at the totem poles. Once we were done, we headed back to town to do some shopping.

It was a nice day outside in the low 60s and the rain had cleared out, so it was perfect for walking around town. We were the only ship in town today so it was really nice walking around. Yesterday in Juneau there were 4 large ships in port, so the stores were super busy. Today were able to walk around and look at everything. I am surprised by how many jewelry stores are in the port of Alaska.

Once we were done shopping, we headed back on board to relax and start getting our room organized for getting off of the ship on Monday. Before dinner we stopped do another picture with the different backgrounds.