Karen Schmauss

We were the last to get on the bus for the Misty Fjords Seaplane trip. (Cost: $217 each, two hours.) The short bus ride through the damp town was narrated by the driver, a pleasant young woman named “Misty” (really) from Tacoma, WA. She said the town hires slews of workers for the summer and even houses them. She told us that the 14,000 permanent residents of Ketchikan work the tourist season of May-October and live off their earnings the rest of the year.

We arrived at Protech Aircraft and were split into groups. A young woman named Tanya from India joined us for a 4-person helicopter. (Tanya ended up with us on the Glacier Dogsled helicopter trip in Juneau as well.) Our pilot was a crusty fellow named “Steve” who gave me the impression that he wasn’t really thrilled with his job - carting tourists about. Tanya’s repeated requests for him to take photos of her didn’t help things. We went up in the air after a short safety briefing. Unfortunately (and typically, I’ve learned) the weather was cloudy and it was hard to see things, but Steve gamely tried to give us a good view. The high point of the trip was landing on a lake and actually getting out! I gingerly crawled out of my rear seat and balanced on the runner of the plane. Wow, I was standing in the middle of a lake!

Tanya managed to mince her way to the back and let Greg sit in front for the return trip. We tipped Steve $5.

We were bused back to the dock, a very short ride. Then we had plenty of time to bum around the town. There were GOBS of souvenir/T-shirt shops; in every port we visited there were many shops selling the same stuff. I bought a pajama top-pant set for our 14-year-old daughter embellished with a glow-in-the-dark wolf, and a T-shirt for our 10-year-old son with the same wolf.

We went to the “red light district”, Creek Street and visited “Dolly’s House”, a famous house of ill repute. The house thrived from 1919 until prostitution was made illegal in the late 1950’s, and Dolly worked as a madam into her 70’s. For $5 we received a self-guided tour through the carefully preserved rooms. It was fairly interesting, although in retrospect I think I would have liked a guided tour better (it wasn’t available to us; I think those may have to be booked ahead of time and the ship didn’t offer it). Then we took an elevator ride ($2) to the top of a mountain where there was a hotel complex and some totem poles.

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