Land lovers rejoice, land ho! The ship arrived at the first port in Alaska this morning, Ketchikan -almost. Norwegian Cruise Line made a decision before COVID shut down everything to build a new cruise terminal at Ward Cove which is quite a few miles away from the city of Ketchikan. According to Google Maps it is nearly 8 miles from Berth 2 which is closest to the tourist area of Ketchikan. Possibly due to the seaplane traffic (which you can see multiple planes in the air in my photos as we arrived) the Norwegian Jewel arrived from the North and did not pass go (Ketchikan), or collect $200. It was still a scenic entry, just with only trees and small houses and not the actual city.
Photos towards the south, Ketchikan is on the left and the airport is on the right.
The little islands near Ward Cover were very scenic.
Some of the industrial remains at Ward Cove remain. There is an old Alaska Ferry which is used to house seasonal workers.
Ward Cove was a superfund site due to the fact that the Ketchikan Pulp Company used to create wood pulp from 1954 until 1997. Now it has been transformed into the Disneyland of Alaska. There is a beautiful water feature, old box cars, a huge gift shop, small stage for musicians and presenters as well as a large gift shop.
I started my day with a tour from the ship – Rainforest Wildlife Sanctuary, Eagles & Totems.
The tour didn’t mention bears, but I remember from the last visit in 2015 that there were bears here. As you can see the meeting time was only 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival time, so I didn’t have much time to explore the cruise terminal. I was directed to a bus and very shortly I was on my way to Herring Cove.
The tour is on private land, so I couldn’t go explore this on my own.
I took a couple of photos of the ship as the bus left Ward Cove.
The bus passed the international airport which is on another island.
The rainforest was beautiful and green.
I unfortunately made my first blunder of the trip and failed to realize my camera was still in time lapse mode, so although I thought I was getting nice video of a bear it was in fact just a few pictures. I was able to get a couple of nice stills from the video.
After viewing the bear for a while from the boardwalk the tour guide took us over to the raptor center which is an educational extension of the main raptor center in Sitka. There was an owl, bald eagle and a hawk.
After the visit with the birds the tour guide then took us to see the totem pole carver. He had recently finished a pole so they were not working on anything too large at the moment, but he did have a nice talk about carving, and had his tools on display. After he was done talking (and people were finished asking questions) we roamed around the lumber mill a little.
While waiting for the bus I took a couple of photos outside of the totems.
At the end of the tour the bus took us all the way back to the ship…. past downtown. So I got on the free shuttle to downtown which actually left quite quickly, despite having to waste the time to drive past town and back to town.
Once in town I took a picture of one of the ships that had a nicer berth – Royal Caribbean, although they were too cheap to pay the National Park Service to go into Glacier Bay.
The ducks were out today. They weren’t around in 2021.
I walked over to Creek Street, the tide was quite low today. So low I found a fish out of water…
I walked up the creek to the fish ladder to watch the salmon jump up the stream.
There were tons of fish…. I spent a lot of time watching the salmon run up the stream. It’s not something you get to see every day.
I got a picture of the Ketchikan sign on the way back to berth #4 to get the free shuttle back to the ship.
I took a picture of the ship at the pier when I returned.
I got a quick bite at the buffet when I returned since I didn’t eat anything after my tour.
I set up my GoPro and my new cinema camera for a time lapse of the departure. I took a few more stills as the ship left as well. The ship exited to the north away from the city in the same direction it arrived.
I had dinner tonight at Le Bistro.
No surprise to those who know me, I had the escargot for my starter and the onion soup. In fact I have been on a crusade for years for NCL to add cheese to their onion soup. Before COVID the main dining room had a “cheese flavored crouton” as if it was a freaking Dorito!
I decided to have the lamb for my main.
And of course I saved room for dessert….
I decided to try the Fraisier. It was just a bit too fancy for me.
After dinner I went to see the show Velvet.
After the show I went to the bar and got a few fun cocktails. Ok, so these weren’t actually mine, but I took a picture of the ones my friends got.
Today’s timeline… not the best because of power saving feature on the phone. But it did capture Herring Cove & Ward Cove
