Our first shore day of the cruise took us to Ketchikan, Alaska. This time we decided that we were not going to do excursions. We had been to Alaska on a previous cruise 10 years ago and did some excursions then but, because we are traveling on a budget this time, we chose to just explore the ports on our own. While excursions are fun, they are also really expensive and can easily double the cost of your cruise. Exploring on your own lets you see many things about the destinations that you would miss if you were only doing touristy stuff. I think we actually enjoyed this approach to shore days better than being on excursions. You get a better feel for the local community and culture of the town. Here are a few photos of things we saw.
We learned about the importance of salmon to the history of Ketchikan by walking along the Ketchikan stream and reading the signs along the way.
Next we headed to Creek Street. This famous historic street is a boardwalk built along Ketchikan Creek. It was a notorious red light district back in the gold mining days frequented by miners and fishermen. Today it has unique little shops.
We venture up a very steep street to the Totem Museum. Unfortunately we were there on a Sunday so the museum was closed but it was still worth the visit seeing the totem poles outside that included information and history of the indigenous peoples.
We had an amazing day and amazingly good weather. It was sunny! Ketchikan gets very little snow but it typically rains an average of 22 days a month in the fall!
Watch the video below to explore Ketchikan with us!
