Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Its a bit of a rainy morning today but not bad. Temperatures are in the high 50's which Tammy and I think are great! Off to hunt for bargains we go! Downtown is abuzz this morning as there seems to be at least 3 cruise ships in and with an average of 2000 passengers and 1000 crew members per boat, that's a lot of extra people.
Of course, since this is my town, the first stop has to be Orca Corn for some tasty kettle corn. This lady makes the best kettle corn ever! We bounced from store to store going from Inside Passage to Tongass stores, to the Ketchikan Mining Co and beyond. Some of the pictures I took were inside the clothing part of our Tongass store. If you don't buy clothes at this store or Walmart, you go online, or naked, your choice! Tongass is pretty small but with my limited fashion knowledge, it seems enough to find jeans and t shirts.
We walked throughout downtown checking out all the shops and I had to show them how bad our average tourist is because the city stations crossing guards not just at corners but on a curve where tourists try to jump a rope barrier to cross at the most dangerous spot. We got a kick out of getting Nina and Jerry to pose for us in some of the more colorful outerwear!
We even saw the local bus which has all the salmon paintings on it. It was painted by a local artist by the name of Ray Troll. Alejandro knows him very well and has a band with Ray's son. They even do a song by Ray which is pretty catchy. We also saw the Duck tour go by. That's an amphibious vehicle which drives around town and then goes in the water for a water tour. Pretty pricey at $44 a head so no thanks. No thanks, especially since Amelia and Nina are no fans of boats! Besides, this duck thing is dangerous to pedestrians. Port security being what it is didn't seem to care that we can walk right up to the cruise ships tied to the dock! When some of those ships are in, they are the tallest business buildings in town.
We went by Salmon Landing for more trinkets and the all too necessary restroom break. They have a cool Orca hanging from the ceiling. Here we found some really cool t shirts but I don't think Jerry was all to happy when I made him pose with the Texas/Alaska comparison t shirts, especially the one that called Texas Alaska's cute little sister. I told him we could always cut Alaska in half and make Texas the third largest state if he wanted! This he did not find amusing! LOL. As you can see from the picture of the trunk of the Explorer, the haul was considerable!
We then went to Creek Street which is the infamous Red Light District of days gone by. Its all shops now. We stopped and took a few pictures of the creek and I explained that we had a rain storm so bad in the recent past that the water made it almost all the way up to the bridge and we thought the bridge was in danger of getting destroyed. The creek did wipe out some stuff but nothing too bad except for a crappy old apartment complex that needed to be condemned anyway.
I offered to pay for a tour of Dolly's House but got no takers. Dolly was the last house standing of the Ladies of questionable virtue. They have preserved it in pretty much the same condition it was in back in the roaring thirties. Nina and Jerry have seen it before and Amelia and Raul declined. I took everyone over to a statue which depicts the people of Ketchikan when it was established. A friend of ours and Alejandro's, Dave Rubin made this sculpture. One of the days we went grocery shopping we ran into Dave and I introduced him. Of course, I had to show them our famous rain gauge which shows our average rainfall of 12.5 feet per year. I make fun of folks in the lower 48 in that they measure rain by the inch while we measure by the foot. One of the things you have to get used to living in a rain forest.
Amelia and Raul were tired so they headed home with Tammy and I stayed in town with Nina and Jerry. We went by the Fish Pirate Saloon and had an Alaskan Amber beer to regroup. From our third story perch, we can see quite a bit so I snapped a few photos. We even saw the Aleutian Ballard, from the TV show Deadliest Catch, go by. It is a tour boat this days and only crabs for tourists. We shopped for a while and called Tammy who picked us up and we headed home.
Upon arriving home we found that Raul had gotten his second wind and gone out exploring on his own. We live eleven miles north of town but the city bus comes within a quarter mile of the house and you can get on for one dollar. He got on and stayed on for two hours riding from the highest seat in the bus going all over town and back. When he returned, we got a good laugh from his adventure and he brought us a bus schedule in case we want to go ourselves. Tonight calls for some rest and trying to figure out where to stash all the souvenirs acquired today.
- comments