12 June – Ketchikan

After another hearty breakfast and a fond farewell to our new friends, we disembarked from the Wilderness Explorer and took a shuttle bus to the Cape Fox Lodge. There, we picked up our rental car and found our way to the Rain Forest Preserve and the Kawanti Rainforest Zip, Skybridge & Rappel Adventure; it had 8 ziplines, 135’ above the rainforest floor, the longest of which was 750 ft. Interspersed among the ziplines were three swinging rope suspension bridges high in the trees and finally a vertical rope descent of 55’. This area is prime territory for Bald Eagles and Bears. We saw many eagles, above and below us, but it is too early in the spring (June is early spring in Alaska) for bears to show themselves very much. We had a great time zipping through the tree tops and later exploring a waterfall.

Then it was off to the Black Bear Inn (https://www.stayinalaska.com/), a B&B on the outskirts of town where we stayed in the room named the Bear's Den (its decor included the only bears we saw that day). The woman who runs the Black Bear with her husband is an artist, formerly director of the Chicago Institute of Art and she decided she was tired of 2-dimensional art and decided to make her B&B a living work of art. We’ve never been a part of an art exhibit before. We enjoyed our stay and would recommend it for anyone who wants a beautiful place to stay in Ketchikan with warm, wonderful hosts.