The last stop on our cruise was Ketchikan. on the way into ketchikan in the morning we saw a pod of Dall porpoises swimming in the distance.
We have been here once before and really enjoyed the little houses in town and the salmon run but there were some sketchy young men who were following people in town and eventually started to follow us when we were by the salmon run so we decided to go back to the ship.
Dall Porpoises
Dall Porpoises
View of Ketchikan from the ship
Statue in the square harbor
Rainfall meter in the square in the harbor
We had booked a boat trip to a native Indian beach. It was listed as a wildlife cruise but we saw very little wildlife and it was disappointing. We did see a few bald eagles along the way and we stopped to take pictures at the Totem Poles.
Bald Eagle passed along the way.
Ketchikan totem poles
The rest of the boat ride to the beach was uneventful and we were met on the beach by some younger women from the tribe.They talked about their reservation, the school where some of them are teachers, and they provided hot dogs and smores for us to cook in the little fires that they built along the beach. They were very nice and open to questions.
Native beach
Native Beach where we had lunch
Some kind of kelp – this is how they anchor to the sea floor
Overall the excursion was not worth the time or the price but we were ready to head back to the ship. Once back we had dinner and returned to this elephant towel animal.
In the morning we were starting to feel sick and there was lots of covid on the ship so we stayed in our room except to get food which we did while masked. We also got a notice from Holland America on our suite door that if we wanted to change our end of cruise transportation from vancouver airport to seattle airport we could. Since the US was still requiring a negative covid test to fly from Vancouver but were not requiring it to cross the border by car or bus, and since if we tested positive in Vancouver, we would have had to quarantine in Canada for 10 days, we decided to make the change. We were able to change our flights, and also book a hotel in Seattle just across from the airport so we relaxed in the room for the rest of the day and watched the scenery of the Inside Passage.
We saw what appeared to be a floating hotel and a barge full of smaller boats being towed up the inside passage in the opposite direction from us.
barge full of boats following the floating hotel.
floating hotel being towed up the inside passage.