We were fortunate to have great weather for our day in Ketchikan. They usually get 12-13 feet of rain a year but this year has been much drier than usual. By 10am when we went for out rainforest walk the sun was shining.
This is a type of cabbage that grows everywhere here. The bears dig up the roots and eat them after they come out of hibernation to get their insides cleaned out and working again after months of rest.
We found this banana slug. They can grow up to about a foot in length. If eaten they make your mouth go numb so bears avoid them. Our guide had a lick of it and her mouth went numb for while.
The forests here are beautiful. Lots of young trees here only about 100 years old as most of the area was logged years ago when first settle by Europeans.
There were salmon swimming in the streams and plenty of gulls eating salmon left by bears or eagles on the banks.
We walked down by the salmon hatchery and streams there where the salmon spawn. We did see some spawning and heaps of salmon just waiting for the tide to come in to help them get a bit further up stream. Salmon return to the stream they come from when they spawn so the tunnels they are released from originally is where they return to 5-7 years later. They swim all the back up the tunnels into the pools at the top.
The view back to the rainforest we just came through.
Then we went into the raptor centre where they rehabilitate injured eagles and also run an education program. We were right in the cage with the birds so able to get nice and close.
The Bald Eagles are impressive – huge claws and they are quite big. We’ve seen quite a few flying or sitting around the place.
There is also a reindeer rehab. Over here they eat reindeer in hot dogs and steaks, we saw it advertised quite a bit at the take-away shops in town. These reindeer were rescued from the sausage factory.
Two bald eagles flew down and caught some salmon out of the stream to eat. You can see one of them with a white head in the lower middle of the pic.
We watched them toss them up on the bank and eat them. The seagulls waited for the leftovers.
Dave is a local indian and he and his wife carve totem poles. They are usually memorials to ancestors or telling a tribal story. Cedar is used and the poles can stand for 200 years. Once they fall they are left on the ground and not restored.
This totem pole took one year and fifteen days to carve.
We had great time here. Was nice to be out in the bush and walking about seeing lots of wildlife. After a couple of hours we went back into town to visits Dollys House.