Ketchikan #2

Fun day today! After breakfast this morning, we took a walk downtown to look around. Michele and Sandy did most of the shopping while Roland and I tried to keep the kids entertained. There was a little square with some local artists and one guy had an owl and a bald eagle. Brandon and Cameron enjoyed seeing an eagle up so close.

At 11, we picked up our box lunches from the hotel and headed back to the airport for our sightseeing flight. It had been sunny all morning, but it started raining on the way there. We hoped it wouldn’t affect our flight. We met our pilot / guide, Scott, and he didn’t seem concerned about the rain as he walked us out to the Caravan with amphibious float (retractable wheels on pontoons). We all got strapped in and we took off.

It was nice being a passenger for a change. I rode up front and took lots of pictures while Scott flew us away from the airport and over downtown Ketchikan. We gained some altitude and skimmed the ridges heading toward the Misty Fjords. We flew down into valleys, over glaciers, and landed on a lake. After landing we saw some bears on the shoreline. He maneuvered the plane up to a big rock in the middle of the lake and we all got out and had lunch. It was so BEAUTIFUL! After lunch, we took off again and flew low-level down a glacier –what a rush! Everyone really enjoyed the flight.

Once we got back to the hotel, Michele and Roland went back downtown to do some more shopping while I did some flight planning for tomorrow. We’ll be flying from Ketchikan to Talkeetna with a fuel / lunch stop in Yakutat.