Day 17 Flight to Misty Fiord

Well blow me down I woke this morning to a strange light coming in my bedroom window, by crickey it is the sun ,so our flight to mIsty will be on . We have about 3 hrs up our sleeve so we decide to go to town and do a little street walking and follow the tourist map to a few of the better known places to see.

The first part of the walk introduces us to what Ketchikan makes a lot of it money on ,Salmon. It takes us past a creek which is alive with salmon trying to get back to their place of birth. Believe me after watching these fish swim up stream I have nothing but admiration for them. This has to be the toughest cross fit course I have ever seen . The water is rushing one way the fish are going the other,it is brutal. You can see the fish visibly tiring and some have just about spent all their energy but still they keep pushing themselves onward, it is an amazing spectacle.

We continued to walk the path and it lead us to the salmon hatchery where I ran into a young man looking after 7'pond of fingerling which will be released to go out to sea and they will return not to the hatchery but to where they were released from , their brains micro prints ever detail of their trip,down stream and this is what gets them back smart fish, but a lot die before they reach home but there are thousands of them.

It is time to go and catch our seaplane to Misty Fiord, the plane is a single engine plane built in 1959 and in great condition .it is what they call a float plane ,in simple terms ,we take off in the water. Take off was smooth and once in the air the views were a mazing. Flying out took 45 minutes and the photos came up,pretty good. We were very fortunate as the weather began to,close in again as we began our return trip.

Home to snooze then up,to see the bear if they are there , they were, wells least one and what a time I had getting his photo, but one Bear doing the same thing ,chewing on his salmon catch get boring ,so we off to a bar we were told about that is just up the road. One drink here but because we like to chat we got talking to the locals nice group. We notice a tiny coming in and he had caught a halibut fish ,looks like an almighty big Flounder I race down to get a photo ,this is a big fish make no mistake. The guy we had been talking knew these guy and asked if they could cut some up,for these four people from Australia , a couple of Ums and sure enough they had cut enough to all four of us and any other Australian nearby. I offer to paid them or buy them a drink but no was the answer, all what was said was ,don't over cook it, so that is tomorrow's lunch.

We shot back for one more glimpse of the bear but this time there were 7 full grown bear and 2cubs a real treat. The light had faded and the photos were not the best but it was our best sighting thus far.

The day has been a very exciting one , and one we didn't know expect but are we happy.

Again I say goodnight and wish you all well.

Love John & Shirley.