Tour de Ketchikan

    As our season starts to wind down, Matt and I have been looking to do as many things off of our bucket list as possible. For Matt, this meant getting to go to the Misty Fjords (an impressive national monument about 40 miles east of Ketchikan) and going on my tour. For me, this meant going on a floatplane. A joint goal of ours was summitting Deer Mountain.This week, we accomplished all of these things and more!

   First, Matt got to go on my trip. I was a little nervous to let him hear my presentation but he says I did great (he might be saying that because he's my boyfriend). It was a blustery day and we ended up having some of the worst waves of the season while he was on board. He still got to see the cannery and be on a boat though and he seemed pretty happy about that!

In front of the waterfall on my tour

Matt's shot of the canning line machinery

Next, Matt and Josh got to go to the Misty Fjords on Kevin's tour (Kev was previously on the Wilderness Survival Tour but it ended in early September so he's been working on the Misty tour ever since). I had to work and was a little jealous that they got to go, but very happy that Matt and Josh got to see the Misty's before we left Ketchikan. It was a gorgeous day and they had a great time. They in fact had a fabulous time because the captain told them to buy beers instead of leaving a tip (the employees get a bonus for selling more stuff) and they happily obliged.

Matt in the Misty's

Josh in the Mistys

                                      Matt got a superb picture of Owlface (the profile of the owl is towards the right of the                                    picture, facing right. The large arch is its eye)

One big wish that Matt and I had was to go on a floatplane tour together. Unfortunately this was hard to accomplish because we have different days off (and the days we do have off together now are days when tours aren't running because the cruise ships are in). So, I had to suck it up and go on a flightseeing tour by myself. I ended up having an amazing time, mostly because the floatplane took us to watch bears!

View of the take-off from inside the floatplane

These were pretty sweet headphones

 The tour I was on is called Neets Bay Bear Watching. The Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association has a salmon hatchery which releases salmon fry to many remote streams all over Revillagigedo Island. The Neets Bay hatchery produces about 99 million summer chum fry and 36 million fall chum fry. The fry are released in several remote locations and 73 million are put back into the stream near the hatchery, which is why it is almost impossible not to see a bear in this stream during the summer months. Whoever thought of this tour idea was a genius because not only do you get to ride on a floatplane with a bird's eye view of Ketchikan, but you get to watch a hatchery in action and (duh!) watch bears in their natural environment. Also, they play Enya on the plane which is the most relaxing music to listen to while you're flying, ever. The Neets Bay staff does not tamper with the bears at all- the only way they affect the bears is by making sure there are plenty of salmon in the stream in the summer months, which ensures that the bears will come back. Our guide, Puck, estimated that about 80 bears live right around the stream area.

 

Hatchery salmon. These salmon think they're swimming upstream right now. Stupid salmon.

The first thing we saw when we came to the bear viewing site: a sow and her cubs walking to the stream!

Helping Mom fish!

This male cub fished for a while not too far off from Mama and her babies

When the male bear got too close for comfort, Mama barked and sent her babies up the tree for safe-keeping

And finally, the pièce de résistance of the bear photos I took:

This big boy was gnawing on a big pile of salmon on the side of our walking path when we stumbled upon him. He just stared as us for a while and then went back to munching yummy salmon brains.

This tour was definitely one of the highlights of my summer so far, and hopefully Matt will be able to squeeze himself on a similar tour before we have to leave. Our last item off the bucket list this week was finally summitting Deer Mountain. If you recall in my post "Mountains, mountains and more mountains" I mentioned that we only reached the 1-mile mark because there was too much snow pack on the ground. That was a lie, it was actually because I was so out of shape I had no desire to go any further, and thankfully there was snow at the top so people would actually believe me when I said that. But yesterday we finally accomplished this task and it was definitely worth the aches and pains that I am now experiencing from my first bit of strenuous exercise in months.

One of the many gorgeous photos that Matt took with his awesome iPhone camera

We did it!

All in all, we had an awesome and very active week. I believe this coming week will be just as busy and just as fun as we wrap things up and say goodbye to some amazing friends and an amazing place.

Cheers!

Bridget