Day 4 - Ketchikan

Another early start to a full, long day. We had a lot planned for Ketchikan, so we knew we wanted to wake up early. That wasn’t a problem at all - we slept with the curtains open again, and with the early sunrise, we woke up pretty early. I woke up a few times throughout the night, and once day started to break, and I looked outside and saw land, I got really excited and couldn’t go back to sleep. After such a rough day at sea the day before, I was ready to get on land! We also had a tight schedule, so we grabbed a quick breakfast as soon as we could, got decked out in layers and layers of hiking gear, and we were one of the first people off the ship once we were docked.

We had planned for a short morning hike on the Deer Mountain Trail, and stopped in the visitor center for guidance on how to get to the trail head and more details on the trail. We took their advice and took a short (but all uphill) cabride to the trailhead. We spent a secluded, quiet, early morning in the Alaskan rainforest. The trail was steep and I didn’t realize how out of shape I was until we started climbing, but we went as far as we could. We had to be back at the pier in time for our snorkeling excursion, so we only had enough time to hike up the mountain for about an hour before we had to return. Unfortunately, as soon as we ended the hike, we realized that Joe hadn’t set his watch back to Alaska time yet, so we actually could have had 2 hours in.




It was too late to head back up the mountain, so we just walked down into the town. We stopped at the Salmon hatchery to walk around, and walked through the old town. We tried shopping in a few stores, but soon decided that it was just huge tourist trap, not our thing, and we headed back to the ship. On the way back, we stopped for lunch at the dock to get some “authentic” (previously frozen probably) Alaskan food.


After changing into swimsuits and sweatshirts, we ventured onto our second excursion - snorkeling in Alaska. We took a bus ride out to Mountain Point, had a little training, and got all dolled up in our wetsuits. Covered from head to toe, we climbed down to the water and went for a swim. The tour guides led us around the waterways, pointing out things to look for. They would pull up sea urchin, starfish, and sea cucumbers from the floor for us to see. The water wasn’t as crystal clear as the snorkeling that we did in St Lucia, but there was still plenty to see. And how cool is it that we went snorkeling in Alaska!? How many other people are crazy enough to do that?!