Final Port Day: Ketchikan

The first thing we notice about Ketchikan when we looked out the window was the number of sea planes. And since we did not sign up for any tours at this port of call, we took our time to have breakfast and we were lucky to get a table by the window so you could see many sea planes landing and taking off as we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast.
I wonder if it was a good thing that we did not sign up for any tours. It was raining cats and dogs outside. We put on our ponchos before getting off the ship on deck 4's gangway. They were originally bought for the Tundra Wilderness Tour in Denali. But as it was actually a bus ride all the way we were safe from the rain even when it drizzled during the tour. We could not find a poncho or even a raincoat in child's size, especially for a little kids as small as you. Thank goodness in the end Aunty Joey (Brettany's mummy) said that she's got one raincoat. When I first brought it home, I was thinking it was still too big for you, but it was a good thing it was a little bigger for you. Reasons are: it was long enough to cover most of your legs/jeans and also I forgot to consider the fact that you were all bulked up with the warm clothing. This is rainy Ketchikan from our balcony:

We wanted to take the free shuttle into the little town (not as small as Skagway!) but the queue was so long, so we decided to take a slow walk into town. Then we arrived near the tourist information counter daddy dropped by to take a map of Kethikan. It was drizzling and we wandered around to look at shops selling smoked salmon, look at the totems and we were headed to some bridge when we stopped to look at some salmons which were gathered under a bridge. There was a nice man there who shared some information about Ketchikan and also told us to follow that pathway to a place where we could see salmons heading upstream to spawn. We walked and we walked and we walked along the stream and we wondered if we were going the wrong way when we finally saw them:
The poor salmons had to try so hard to go upstream. And when they've finally made it, they were all so tired, they just stopped. You can actually see lots of them resting on the bottom right of the picture below:

Here we are all in our poncho and rain coat while watching the salmons:

After watching them for a while, we finally left and headed towards the hatchery. But after a while, you grumbled about being tired and wanting to head back to the ship. We all took turns to carry you, but in the end we gave up as you were too heavy and the salmon hatchery looked too far for us to walk, especially with Ah Ma and her bad knee and you refusing to walk! As we were walking we were overwhelmed with the stench. There were dead salmon and there were salmons resting before they headed to spawn further upstream. You cannot see them clearly in this picture, but the whole stream was black (not from pollution) because it was full of fishes!

We headed back and had lunch. Lunch for you was as usual cheesy pizza. We've had pizza so often that before I could open my mouth to order, the guy at the pizzeria already knew what I wanted. He only needed to know how many slices I wanted that day!!

We left you at the Kidz Zone then headed to disembark the shop again because I wanted to buy something from Safeway. Daddy and I walked and walked and finally reached Safeway. After that we all had a short nap before dinner time. Dinner was a bit late so we could not make it on time for the 8pm show.