Gift Shop City

Our last day in Alaska (tomorrow we'll technically be in Candian waters) meant a stop at Ketchkan, Alaska's first city and the salmon capital of the world (it must be true; look at the sign). Normally it rains on 2/3 of the days here and sure enough, it was raining lightly when the ship docked in mid-morning.

Originally we were going to do a walk through the rainforest and do some wildlife viewing on the water but considering we saw a lot of similar stuff in Skagway, we changed it up and did a lumberjack show instead. It was actually very busy and the place was completely full. The whole thing is a "competition" between an American side and Canadian side even though most guys are American. They have a whole show planned out complete with (corny) jokes but they do legitimately show some of the events from the lumberjack competitions you'd see on ESPN2, like pole climbs, sawing logs and chopping pieces of wood. It was entertaining though for something that wasn't terribly expensive and lasted an hour.

After it was over the 8 lumberjacks take pictures so Jess went up there. She wore a plaid shirt for the occassion and when she told the guys, they said they should celebrate and then picked her up for the picture. I think this picture rivals the puppy one for her...I'm not sure how I feel about it though.

Following the show, the rain held off but it was pretty windy so it ended up being chilly. We walked around to see some of the sights on the walking tour but it truthfully wasn't that interesting. Most of the buildings are gift shops or jewelry stores - in fact, we didn't even see many places to get something to east for lunch. After wandering around a bit and shopping - enjoying some brief sunshine along the way - we headed back to the ship. At this point, Jess has a little cold and I had a headache too (and I'm about done with crowds in tourist areas) so we just took it easy the rest of the day. After three straight days of seeing similar towns, I'm kind of glad we're not stopping in one tomorrow.

We left the dock around dinnertime and now the ship will cross over into Canadian water overnight. Tomorrow is a day at sea so maybe we'll find something fun to do during our last full day of the trip.

As the say in the forest, "A chainsaw in the hand is worth two axes in each hand." Note: No one says this.