Our route and current location: [Note - I forgot to turn on tracking for a while - the track is discontinuous but does pick up later]
https://share.garmin.com/RonRisden
For those following along at home - and at work - the Sail Blog app is just a straight line, giving our anchored locations - where we end for the day. The Garmin track linked above, which starts in Powell River, gives a fairly continuous track of our travels; showing the ins and outs (and backtracking) we are doing. Also you will notice that the dates of the writing may seem a little off. Entries get written when there is a good internet connection and may reflect that date. We will try to start putting the date(s) we are at a specific location into the heading.

Ketchikan is an interesting place. It started out as a logging/fishing town as did quite a few towns in South East Alaska. When that economy started to go a little flat, the town turned to a different source of income. Nowadays, during the summer months, there are usually 4 to 5 large cruise liners parked in the "historic" downtown area. I say historic in quotes because while some of the original buildings (early to mid 1900's) have been renovated, many more have been constructed more recently but built in an old style fashion. It gives the appearance of an old town movie set. The fact that so many of the streets that front the water side have wooden board walks only adds to the feeling of a movie set. In fact, most of the stores and shops in this section of town have contracts with, or are totally owned by the cruise lines. The folks coming to visit 'wild Alaska' are looking at the same merchandise that is in St Thomas or St Croix in the Caribbean; the goods just get rolled up at the end of the season in Alaska, and transported to the next seasonal destination for the ships. Not quite the experience we were looking for.

The town itself has a population that is one of the larger ones in SE Alaska. There is still a viable economy there that is not dependent upon the tourist trade from the cruise lines; it is just smaller than the one that runs from June to end of August. Many charter fishing boats are there as well as a lot of the local government services. The Coast Guard has a base that as well as the US Customs and Border Patrol. The airport has many flights arriving from the lower 48 that make Ketchikan the first stop. Travelers continue on via commercial jet or float plane or one of the many ferries in the Alaska state ferry system.

Finally no small story of Ketchikan would be complete without mention of the 'liquid sunshine'. Living in Seattle, we always get asked about the rain a lot. The average rainfall in Seattle is @ 63 inches a year; but only @ 5 or 6 days that get more than 1" at a time. That means it rains frequently, but lightly in Seattle.

Ketchikan gets an average of 140 to 150 inches a year. Think about that. 12 feet of water falling out of the sky in an average year. The record is somewhere @ 200 inches in a single year. It is the wettest spot in SE Alaska - which is the wettest section of Alaska as a whole - and one of the wettest in the US.

Given that, the entertainment value was great as we watched when a cruise ship would pull up and the passengers would get off to check out the town. They were ready; they had their cruise line approved rain gear - basically similar to a large plastic garbage bag with holes cut out for your head and arms. As the sky started to open up, the raingear failed under these conditions and the passengers headed back in droves to the ships. The only problem is that once off the ship, you need to "clear" back on, using your personal ID and the cruise line issued ID. If you have never gone through it, the process is a little like clearing the TSA checkpoint at the airport, just not quite as severe. The lines on the uncovered ramps quickly grew to over a ½ hour long. Not my idea of a fun cruise.

We walked around town in our foul weather gear, covered from head to toe in waterproof stuff, and had a great time; we even went on the boardwalk where we came across the infamous 'Red Light district' where we took the shot shown at the top of the blog entry.