Pacific Northwest and Alaska: Ketchikan, Alaska

We had an easy time boarding the Island Princess in Vancouver and left the city in the late afternoon. We’ve been on this ship before, on a cruise through Panama Canal a few years ago, so we are pretty familiar with the amenities. It is a mid-size cruise ship, about 2,300 passengers and one of only two ships that Princess owns that are narrow enough to go through the Panama Canal.

The first full day on the cruise was a sea day. We relaxed on our balcony, though it was a bit chilly. The scenery was beautiful – lots of islands to examine with my new binoculars.

The second day was in Ketchikan. We took a full day tour of the Misty Fjords National Monument. In order to get there in a reasonable amount of time, we had to take a high powered catamaran. A regular powered boat would take 8 or so hours just to get out there, compared to the two hours we took. A naturalist was aboard to talk about what we were seeing and we also had a Native American speaker who shared about his people’s culture and their adaptation to the modern world.

John Muir compared the area with Yosemite because of the u-shaped glaciated valleys and, I have to say, the similarity was startling. In Misty Fjords, these valleys are filled with water and are called canals. The walls are just as dramatic as Yosemite Valley – vertical walls of bare granite, two to three thousand feet high. The canals are 1,000 feet deep. There are some glaciers on the higher mountains and you could see waterfalls everywhere. Absolutely beautiful country!

We didn’t have time to explore Ketchikan but hope to when we return on the southbound part of the cruise. We did see the dock that a Celebrity ship obliterated a couple of weeks earlier. They are already at work repairing it, but we will probably have to use the tender boats on our return trip.

We boarded the ship in downtown Vancouver.

The cruise terminal looks like a cruise ship itself. It is huge with lots of covered space for long term parking and easy on-off to the ship.

The ship passes under Lion's Gate Bridge on its way out to the Inside Passage.

The tour out to Misty Fjord passed through some narrow channels.

Vancouver camped on the beach of New Eddystone Rock, a 237 foot tall piece of basalt. It is all that remains of a 5 million year old volcano. It sits smack in the middle of a canal.

The tourists are getting excited as we near the main valley.

Turning the corner, we can start to see the polished granite of the valley.

Starting to see areas that remind me of Yosemite Valley. Full of tall waterfalls and steep cliffs.

We arrived at low tide. You can see how the trees live along a very straight line. The tricolor area consists of algae, mussels and white granite which is what most of the mountains are made of. Just below the water level is a highly nutritious lime green algae.

As the valley continues, we got views of tall mountains in the distance. And more glaciated valleys.

Waterfalls were everywhere.

Flightseeing planes were coming and going.

We saw a few creatures - harbor seals in this case.

Boy, I sure was glad to have a naturalist aboard to explain that this red circle was a pictograph left by the Tlingit natives as a boundary indicator. I would never have noticed it.