Aloha, friends, and happy Friday! I know, I know, I haven’t been at work in what feels like forever {seriously, this is the most leave I’ve been able to take at once since I was commissioned}, but I’m still glad to be at the end of the week. So before I go on with the cruise updates, you might notice that there have been a few changes around here. Go ahead, look around. I’m totally not sitting here squirming with excitement while you do.
You didn’t notice?? Oh, for…let me help you here. I have a blog name! Better than that, I have a blog purpose! I had a total epiphany while I was putting together my notes from our Alaska cruise, triggered by this post from Jenni and this post from Erika, and, well, things just came together.
My “thing” is a good challenge. Setting goals and taking them on. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but always the thrill is in the chase, pursuing something that I wouldn’t ordinarily have thought possible. I’ll give you more on this on Monday after I’ve let it cycle through my brain a few times, but that’s the kicker behind the new look and new name around here!
As for our regularly scheduled programming here, this is the last of the spots to show you on our Alaska Cruise tour, and then it’s on to the next challenge! Life in the islands. Fitness goals. Getting this house ship-shape. Life goals. Sharing motivation and inspiration. And, always, adventure!
Ziplining in Ketchikan
Our final port of call in Alaska was the little town/island of Ketchikan. It’s a huge fishing port that also runs a huge trade in tourism and once upon a time, ran a trade in things much more, ahem, risqué during the Gold Rush era. We decided to start our day in Ketchikan by looking for wildlife in and around the temperate rainforest. Well, more accurately…above the temperate rainforest, about 130 feet above. We went ziplining!
Our crew picked us up at the port as per norm, and we headed out to Alaska Canopy Adventures to begin our tour of the rainforest canopy. After we got fitted out with our gear and went through a short practice line with our guides, our adventure began.
And now onto the big ziplines!
I still think one of the highlights of the trip was when one of the older guys with us, heading out on the big zipline for the first time, screamed out, “Holy f***, I’m flying!” The guides even laughed – that was a new one for them. And no, it wasn’t my husband. All I heard him saying most of the time was, “Wheeeeeee!!“
We paused at each of the zipline stops to look around and search for wildlife. We saw bald eagles around, kit foxes, lots of northwest ravens, but no bears – though we did see a bear den. Don’t worry, though. Every time we zipped, stood around, or walked on one of the suspension bridges, we were fully tied in!
After the last zip, we hung around at the base for a while, sampling salmon pate and waiting for our ride back into town, and admiring some of the views. For being a small island, Ketchikan is really diverse in wildlife and ecosystems, and we would have liked to hike around and see more, but honestly, it wasn’t the time constraint getting us this time…it was days of cruise and months of travel weighing down on us. We were starting to burn out.
Creek Street
Instead of heading into the Lumberjack Show like a lot of other folks touring around, Scott and I asked our guides for a good place to grab some grub and see the local community. They recommended an offshoot of O’Brien’s Pub that sits under an awning on the once notorious Creek Street.
Creek Street is all elevated on posts over the water, and is really quite beautiful. What makes Creek Street notorious is that it used to be Ketchikan’s red light district, “where men and salmon go to spawn.” There’s even a brothel there filled with campy reenactors who try to solicit you off the street. We skipped that, though, and just walked around, grabbing our salmon chowder and our drinks and watching…
…the amazing amount of salmon. They weren’t kidding about the salmon spawning here!
We even saw them jumping from the water when we were heading back to the dock. The darn things really are everywhere. It was no wonder that locals and tourists alike were lining all the bridges and docks with fishing rods and nets, catching salmon. There are actually a lot of shops there that will clean, ice-pack, and ship your catch to you.
Still, this was the point where we really started to feel travel-burn-out. We were at the point where neither of us wanted to see one more “buy now” sign or “best tour” sign. We just wanted a chance to go and flop, and we were really at the point where we were tired of living out of suitcases. I really wish we could have done Ketchikan better credit than we did, because it really is a charming town, but we were burnt. So we went back to the boat and sat in Diversions, one of the gaming lounges, and had a cold Alaskan Amber while we watched the ship pull out of port.
That’s it for our adventures in Alaska, folks! After this, we spent a day at sea and headed back to Vancouver, where we were able to catch our breath for a day before beginning our journey westward to Hawaii. While we were sad to have to disembark, we were also ready for our adventures to be at an end {three months is a long time to be living out of suitcases!}. We were ready to have a place to call home again.
After checking into our hotel in Vancouver, we did hike our way over to Stanley Park and watch the Disney Wonder sail out on her next voyage.
While we wished them well, we weren’t envious, because we knew just what kind of amazing adventures lay in store for them and we knew that our next adventure was finding a place to call home.
