July 17

W e spent the entire day today touring all the sights in Ketchikan.  We took a hotel shuttle, a free downtown bus and a city bus a couple miles from the downtown area to see the Saxman  historic Totem park.

It is an area where the have erected many Totem poles from the area and there is a building where local Totem carvers continue to carve Totem poles today.  The tour person said that it may cost up to $4-5,000 a foot for a master carver to carve a pole for sale and take up to a week per foot to carve, depending on the detail.

After an hour or so, we caught the bus and headed back downtown.  They have a well mapped 35 point walking tour that starts at the visitors center and covers a couple miles of the downtown and historic areas.  This was the starting point.

The part of the tour I liked the best is the area along Ketchikan Creek, where you could see the Salmon swimming up stream to spawn.