Ketchican

Ketchican, Alaska is where Danny's aunt and uncle and cousins moved for a short time a while back to make their fortune in ship building. It didn't really work out, but his aunt and cousins did invent a great salmon dip they named "Humpy's" to sell to the disembarking cruiseline passengers at the docks. We were those passengers today, and tried to imagine where their little stand would've been set up and whether we would've bought some if we didn't know them.

Maybe here, on Creek Street?  Cutest tourist trap ever!

Salmon is in no short supply in Ketchican, in fact we got to see so many swarming around, lining up in a gigantic traffic jam, all waiting to make their run, that I started to understand for the first time from whence came that human hubris regarding the supposed endlessness of bounty from the sea.

(Sorry for yet another syndication of Ali's blog photos, but I didn't even attempt to capture it. Shooting through light on water is hard!)

We followed their run all the way to the top, watched them try to jump up the enormous waterfall that was the main bottleneck causing the traffic jam, which seemed absolutely impassible and I never would have believed they could have if I didn't see them there myself. Not nearly as many at the top as at the bottom, though. A pretty brutal selection process.

When we tired of tracking the salmon (which took several hours, Jack was pretty excited about the real life "shih!") we headed back to the boat, stopping at a funicular along the way to take a ride up to the top of a big hill and admire the view of the town and the random totem poles they had there on display.



Jack thought the funicular was a choo-choo and enjoyed himself so much he fell asleep on the way down. (And it was only about a 2 minute ride.)

We hightailed it down to the boat, tucked Jack into bed, took our baby monitor out to our deck's little restaurant, and enjoyed a free meal overlooking the port and watching seaplanes land. I would later find out that Chris feasted on king crab legs and would be jealous for the rest of the trip until I got mine.