I have been taking some time off and my colleagues Bob and Nancy Dunn of Cruising Done Right filled in during their Alaska tour and cruise with Princess Cruises. Today’s final epistle is from Ketchikan.
KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Is there a port that depends more on cruise ships than Ketchikan? Here, there are 13,000 residents who make up to $35,000 in the summer and as little as nothing in the winter. Here, cruise ships come even though “we get 34 feet of rain a year” — in sharp contrast to its sister city in California: Palm Desert.
And here, ships like the Coral Princess
stock up with enough seafood to last its passengers ALL WINTER while it navigates the Panama Canal.
It rains so much in Ketchikan that they joke and sing songs about it. “The residents get ornery if there are too many dry days,” says Ed Beane, who logs 35,000 miles a year on a 26-mile stretch of road, driving school and tour buses. Average commute time in Ketchikan is 12 minutes.
True to form, when the Coral Princess docked next to sister ship the Golden Princess and two Holland America cruise ships (Zuiderdam and 
Westerdam) in Ketchikan, it was raining. They say that happens only 265 days a year and, yes, 34 feet is a tour guide exercising some hyperbole. They only get about 15 feet of rain a year.
The only “road” into and out of the salmon capital of the world is a strip of water half a mile wide and seven miles long. So everything in Ketchikan is flown or shipped in — the boat with supplies arrives every two weeks from Seattle.
Life is tough here. A can of soup goes for $2.50. A pizza costs $32.50. A pound of cheese…$12. Those who can afford such extravagances do so on the strength of the tourist season, May 9 to September 23 this year. After that, 35% unemployment kicks in.
The good news is that Ketchikan’s people bend over backwards for tourists. They’ll show you how to catch crabs and then feed you as much Dungeness as you care to eat. They’ll take you fishing and crabbing, 
snorkeling and kayaking, bear watching and eagle sighting. In the rain, of course. The less exotic tourists can visit sanctuaries for wildlife and (wait for it) rain forests.
Ketchikan has the largest national forest in the U.S. (called Tongass), a bordello museum and an enormous statue of an eagle because from the air this 100-year-old port looks like “the thundering wings of an eagle” — the meaning of the word, Ketchikan. The statue is also called their “mooning eagle” because that’s what it’s doing…mooning the skies that deliver all that rain.
