We took a bus to Mendenhall Glacier, we had about an hour to walk around on our own. We saw salmon and BEARS!! It was very cold but fun! Was a lot of walking and hard for my parents to walk on the steep trails.
Whale watching Rating:
We were out for 2+hrs and didn't see whales. We saw Orcas which the travel crew counted as whales but they were even far away and we only saw the fins and couldn't really see them. Probably wouldn't recommend doing the whale watching in Sept. They are mostly gone by this time
We chose to take a bus tour for about $48 per person, that followed the same path as the train that cost $169 per person. We had a great driver that was very informative about Skagway and Alaska. She made several stops for us to get out and take pictures and we got to take pictures by the Welcome to Alaska sign as we crossed over the border into Canada. We really enjoyed the tour.
We chose not to do an excursion in Ketchikan, however this was our favorite city. We walked down to Creek street and took the pulled car up the mountain for $2.00 and saw totem poles and had a great view of the city and our ship. We did some shopping and had a great time enjoying the city. It was very convenient because the city is very small and everything is within walking distance.
We took a cab into town and the driver was very rude and in so much of a hurry he started driving off as my mother was getting in the car. We told him we wanted to be taken into the heart of things, but he dropped us off in a location that was still very far away from the stores and restaurants and we had to catch a 2nd cab. We saw several people at the ship taking horse draw tours and if we had it to do over would have booked one of those. It was 7pm when we got into Victoria BC so it was dark and we really didn't get to see to much.
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