Holiday on Ice # 5: Into the Mists

Yesterday we stopped in Ketchikan.  And I didn’t get to see much of it at all.

The good news: I’ve actually been to Ketchikan twice before.  After I get home, I’ll do a supplementary blog post covering my trip here in 2007.

Because of Princess Cruises’ determination to squeeze in a stop in Victoria, our port call in Ketchikan is only 5½ hours long.  My excursion took up almost all of that time.  But it was a trip I’d never managed to do yet, and it was totally worth every minute of it.

The boat cruise to Misty Fjords National Monument covers 110 miles and lasts 4½ hours – and that’s on a high-speed catamaran cruising for most of the trip at 40 knots!  The Monument occupies a sizable chunk of the Alaskan mainland, around the back side of the island on which Ketchikan sits, Revillagigedo Island (always called “Revilla” for short, locally). 

Once we circled the southern end of Revilla Island and started back north up the Behm Canal, our first scenic attraction was the New Eddystone Rock, named by Captain George Vancouver after the famous rock stack off the southern coast of England.  This one is not a rock stack, strictly speaking, but a volcanic plug.  It fascinates me because it is a different shape from every direction, like almost all geological formations such as mountains.  But here you can two very different views in the space of a few moments.  It's also fascinating to see how the trees gain a foothold in such precarious spots.

On the low-lying rock spit beside the Rock there were a number of harbour seals hauled out and basking in the sun.  It was hard to photograph them because our noisy hydro-jet powered vessel couldn’t come close without scaring them into the water.

Soon after, we turned east into the laconically named Rudyard Bay, and entered a wonderland of scenic beauty.  Everything came together – towering cliffs, dark forests, pearly mist, blazing sun, glossy black waters, and no breeze at all – to create, once again, sheer magic.

On the journey back into Ketchikan, we spotted a pod of orcas travelling north at a good speed.  We had them in sight for several minutes.  Once again, I was plying the video camera so results will have to wait.

Back on board Ruby Princess, I climbed to the brilliantly sunny top deck for the sailaway, and got a few photos of Ketchikan from my 16-storey vantage point.

Dear old Ketchikan, with its named and numbered boardwalk stairs “streets,” its profusion of tourist stores, its fresh seafood restaurants, its unique Creek Street historic area, all lorded over by the deluxe Cape Fox Lodge.  In this picture, the Lodge is the complex of grey buildings on the ridge, and Creek Street is the line of brightly coloured houses along the base of the hill below.

We really needed and deserved a full day.  If you’ve never been here, make sure when you book a cruise that it offers a full-day stop in Ketchikan.  It’s the very least time you need if you want to get to know this fun little town a bit better.