Ketchikan and Misty Fjords post 14 of 16

July 2, 2018

This was our last stop in Alaska. The excursion to Misty Fjords was supposed to be the highlight, but we went shopping earlier in the day, and I noticed Copper had noticed that there was salmon to be had, if only he could secure a cloak of invisibility:



To set the geography, we continued heading south from Glacier Bay, and Skagway, and Juneau, to Ketchikan, and the Misty Fjords:

map courtesy travelalaska.com

Ketchikan had a lot of retail "opportunities", and we spent big on the salmon here. There's a creek right downtown, and a boardwalk. I was able to get a shot with my phone:



We had learned either here, or at a previous stop (Juneau I think), that the diamond business was big business. Huge, as it turned out. We asked, and the local shopkeepers told us the story.

It seems that the Caribbean retail trade depends heavily on the cruise industry, and when the cruising population dwindles... well, so does business. So why not follow the cruise population? It all made sense, what with the aggressive sales techniques ("Lady, you want free diamonds? Come on in...") and heavily accented English we encountered here. No first nation peoples... not indigenous, anyway.

This was not loved by the locals. It seems the big diamond sales companies have deep pockets, and they started renting/buying up all the storefronts closest to the docks... which pushed the locals farther away.

And there's gold in them thar pockets... one local showed us the ship schedule that's published for the retailers, as to which boat arrives when, and with how many passengers.

We're talking anywhere from four thousand to ten thousand souls per day. NEW souls. Witness:


Our Coral Princess, one of four ship in that day, accounted for two thousand passengers. Imagine your town swelling in that way, every single day.

The harbor itself was quite pretty. Picturesque, as it turned out:



As we departed on an excursion boat for the Misty Fjords National Monument, I noticed, on the bow of the Coral Princess, an open door, and wondered... is that a disciplinary thing?



We traveled not too far south, and came upon this vessel moored at its dock. For some reason the phrase "one percent" kept rolling around in my head:



A bit further south we encountered the Ketchikan totem area. We had already decided to not visit the site as we planned to see totems in Stanley Park in Vancouver. I knew when I took the shot that the power lines were going to render it a snapshot (no way could I edit those out!!) so I present it as just that:



As we continued, we were blessed with an orca sighting. Two, actually:



All of this visual input, right out of Ketchikan, really got us excited for the Misty Fjords excursion. Perhaps that was unfair. But what subsequently transpired was... an hour and a half of (of course) pretty hills, mountain views, and water, of course, running at perhaps 30 knots. The entry into Misty Fjords provided more interesting land forms, and of course, there was the always stunning New Eddystone Rock:


This is a basalt formation resulting from a volcanic vent coming through fractures in the canal floor. The area was then scoured by a glacier, leaving the formation behind.

That picture, above, provides some context for the formation. Here's a closer look:



And, there were other stunning features:


This sheer rock face shimmered in the fickle sunlight and put me in mind of fish in water, when one can sometimes catch a silvery flash...

And this rather stunning water-to-rock progression, in Rudyerd Bay's Punchbowl Cove:


There was very little post processing on that frame: a little cropping, a third of a stop of exposure added, that's it.

Same with the next shot, the caldera, with a plane included for perspective. No cropping, a third of a stop of exposure added, and the preset "vivid" in Lightroom applied to bring out some contrast and detail in colors and formations:




And, how about some waterfall action... showing a similar pattern in the rock face as earlier, evidence of the glacial scraping:



Since Ketchikan has 160 inches of rain yearly (4th wettest place on Earth), I grabbed this shot and joked it was my mission to find sunlight... somewhere!!



Last, but by no means least, another rock-meets-water interpretation. Wow.



It should be noted that the pictures from (not including) New Eddystone to this last one were shot in the space of thirty-seven minutes.

Then, the ninety minute sojourn back to the ship:



Linda and I agreed that the four hours on this excursion were... long. We said it was our least fave. And now that I've blogged the fruits of my photo labor... um, not so fast there, y'all. Were we jaded? I think a bit. Probably more like overwhelmed, at that point. Who knows. I just know I'm likin' this excursion more and more... score one for photography!





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