Ketchikan Panoramischer Blick:
Ketchikan |
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Our first port of call was Ketchikan - Alaska's first city(1890 - 40 inhabitants; 2010 - 8,000 inhabitants and thus the second largest city in Alaska!) ketchikan lives off tourists and salmonfishing.
For the tourists there are a variety of entertainment options, including the always popular jewelry shops which seem to be required of all tourist towns and cruise ships!.
Here apicture of our ship, in the foreground the settler monument with a few of our shipmates behind it.We took a combined boat and bus tour of Ketchikan and environs, starting with the boat tour
the boat tour itself would probably not have been that interesting: 
Dramatic scnenery, water and forests - serious waterfalls - it was beginning of snowmelt, after all. But then came one of the highpoints of the trip: 
A humpback Wale and her calf frolicked for more than 20 minutes near our boat and put on quite a show. Since the animals only surface (breach) at random (usually when one is not pointing the camera in the right direction) and dive immediately, we unfortunately have only this picture of the calf's tail. We can see migrating wales off shore here in California, but not as close as we came in Ketchikan. Aside from that, you can't get a guarantee that there will be any wales at all when you are visiting. Just dumb luck. We were happy. Below one more waterfall
The boat took us to the old cannery, once the main industry of the town
The cannery is now a museum, today salmon are processed on ships. After the cannery we continued via bus back to town, to the Totem Heritage Center. Ketchikan has the largest collection of totem poles (some original, but many have been restored or carved new) As has been common for cultural objects in many countries, many of the original totems became the victims ofzealous missionaries and/or government officials. Many missionaries believed that totems had religious (heathen!) significance and insisted on their distruction. In other cases totems (and other cultural objects) were taken by collectors or government employees and ended up in museums or private collections
in 1976 a Museum was founded here and, among other items contains the totem pole collection. Here is also a carving center, where one can interact with native carvers who are creating new poles. Contrary to the beliefs of the missionaries, totem poles do not have religious meaning, instead each pole tells a story based on events of significance to the carver. It is said that only the original carver really understands the meaning of a complex pole. Below the first two totems have a political background. First there is the Abraham Lincoln pole, with odd short legs. Thereason is that the carver had only seen one picture of a seated Lincoln and thus had no idea that Lincoln was extremely tall. The second pole shows William Henry Seward, the then secretary of state and famous for purchasing Alaska in 1867 from Russia for $7.2 million. Alaska became known as "Seward's Folly", since people at the time could not imagine that Alaska could possibly have any value to the US. Seward visited Alaska and was the guest of honor at a Potlatch where he received valuable presents. It was common and expected that the honoree would return the favor and Seward promised that he would bestow presents on the villagers. Didn't do it. As a consequence someone carved a totem pole showing a seated Seward with prominent red ears. The red ears signify that Seward is a liar and thus the pole has becomeknowns as the Liar's Pole.
Below is a link to a very nice video of ketchikan and the totem poles. The video is accompanied by the classic pop song "North to Alaska" - this song has significance for me and I will refer to it when we talk about the dogsledding.:
Video of Ketchikan and Totem Poles
Near the Totem Center we finally saw a slew of bald eagles.
Our next stop was the (in)famous Creek Street, once upon a time Ketchikan's "hospitality center". creek Street was not only famous for its bordellos, but it was
also the place to get a drink of smuggled whiskey during prohibition. The houses are built on the shores of the Ketchkan Creek and each house had a trap door to the creek through which the smuggled hooch was loaded and, if there was a raid, could be dumped. Like many other similar sites in Alaska, Creek Street has been tamed and provides restaurants and shops that cater to cruiseship passengers.