Day 2: Ketchikan

Ketchikan, rain capital of North America (13 feet p.a., plus snow) is a gorgeous little tourist trap - er, destination - on the Alaska coastline. Major industries are salmon fishing, and flogging jewellery. Flogging really, really hard. Especially Joe… but we’ll come to that.

We hoped to watch the ship sail in, but the ship docked early so we missed that bit. Then we hit the deck for our 7.20am “backcountry jetboat excursion” to be advised it was postponed to 9.30. So far so bad.

As it turns out, this wasn’t a bad thing at all. It gave us time to wander through Creek Street, the core of old Ketchikan where, as you’d expect, we met a guy from Adelaide running a shop there. It’s spawning season so there were salmon everywhere, but mostly dying as they do after they spawn, which makes the whole mating thing somewhat less attractive to me.

One of Creek Street’s most famous attractions is Dolly’s House (the light blue building in the photo below), which was one of Alaska’s most famous brothels. They seem to take an extraordinary pride in it, which probably says something about Alaskans that I’ll leave to others to interpret.


We eventually managed to catch the jetboat, which took us into some tiny and rather spectacular bays and inlets, where we saw seals, bald eagles, jelly fish and a two to three metre sea lion. None of the animal pics turned out, so have a look at the shot below and imagine an eagle with a three metre wingspan flying across it:


Back in Ketchikan we went to few jewellery shops as Emma had seen a rather nice Tanzanite (no, I’d never heard of it either) ring and thought it worthwhile shopping around. Being the last week of tourist season prices were rather competitive.

Shopping for the best piece and prices was a good idea in theory - and then we met Joe.

As we passed one shop Joe greeted us, chatted a bit, then invited us in and talked about jewellery. After a few minutes he showed us a few pieces, “just for fun”. Then he talked some more. Then a few more pieces. If we didn’t like that setting we could try this one, or that one, or what about that stone? No? Well how about we see their other shop, where he showed a few more pieces, and talked a bit more. Then a bit more. Then a bit more.

We fled for the nearest fish and chip shop.

After lunch Emma decided she particularly liked a ring we’d seen in the second shop we visited. The catch was Joe’s shop was between us and this jeweler, so we took a two block detour, bought the ring, and planned our escape:

Joe’s shop was between us and the Sun Princess. I’d fire the smoke grenades and lay down covering fire with machine guns, while Emma sprinted for the first building. Once around the corner she’d lay down suppressing fire while I leap-frogged past her to the boarding ramp. Then I’d drop more smoke as she bolted past me.

It worked. But it was a close thing.