Day 4: Wednesday - Land Ho!!! (Ho)

Wednesday was our first day disembarking. We hit Ketchikan, where we hadn’t booked any “adventures”. Which was lucky, because it was rainiing cats and dogs.



Since the Ketchikan brewery we had hoped to visit had shut down years before, we went to check out the microbrews over at Steamers. It looked like they had a flight from the Alaska Steamship Company, but when I asked the waiter about it said no. So I was understandably confused when they brought Ralph a flight along with my Moose Drool (the more horrible something sounds, the harder it is for me to resist).





I went ahead and got a "flight", called a “sampler” by the less pretentious Alaskans. The hefeweizen really tasted of bananas. The IPA was good, but as usual, the amber was my favorite. The scallops appetizer we got totally kicked ass – fresh scallops wrapped in bacon bathed in hollandaise…sorry arteries, I owe you this one for the tournadoes.







We did a little tourist shopping.



Aren't half of these items illegal?



I was summoned back into the fold before I could get a fortune from Pappy



We found a cool store called House of Haida run by local artisans.







Unfortunately, this bag I am in love with costs 7,000 dollars, yep, 7k. Why? Because it takes an entire year to make one.



Locals refused to sell their houses to make way for the road, so this tunnel was dug beneath the houses in 1954



THE place to get burgers in Ketchikan is Burger Queen. Burger King has tried to move into town a number of times and the locals wont have it.



Why is it called Burger Queen?





They offer an impressive array of freshly made shakes, but sadly no salmonberry. The boys showed me the bushes up on the side of the hill and it was clear why they were not picking salmonberries that day.



Burger Queen prints up a little newsletter to give you something to read while you wait. In a counterintuitive move, there is a section titled "Insect Facts"



Since there were no salmonberries that day, they made me up a special banana-raspberry shake, and along with the best burger EVER – seriously. Sorry Elbow Room, sorry Steves and Ricks and whomevers, but wow. Killer burger.