Allans Abroad: Ketchikan: where people drive screaming through the scenery

The view from my window this morning.

The picturesque town of Ketchikan was the first town settled in Alaska, has now 8,000 perm residents & is only accessed by boat. Even the airstrip is on a different island so quite literally, the only way to get to Ketchikan is by water.

The village is perched on the little available land at the edge of the water and in fact also ON the water. That ‘highway’ you can see running along between the water & those long buildings, which we took on our way to the ATV excursion, is built on stilts over the water.

The weather was again with us, lucky travellers that we are, and so after much debate we launched off into the bright sunshine with two fewer layers than we took yesterday. And even then we had too many clothes, for we were outfitted at the ATV place with some of the least flattering attire known to man. PLUS a bandanna for the dust. Clearly modelled on the clean up duty at Chernobyl stylings.

After the obligatory & rather more ‘slap your wrists’ than usual, safety talk we were safely harnessed in and off tearing through the beautiful scenery - not looking at it one little bit

to this pretty lookout. I’ll show you the lookout enhanced by how attractive we look in our Chernobyl gear.

Our ATV gave up the ghost at this point, so after our next ‘don’t do this anymore’ talk from our guide MGM had to drive the tail car with the guide in the back. Talk about being on your best behaviour Mike 😳 as he drove the next leg to the waterfall.

Here he is showing of his dashing gear, he’s striped off a layer because the plasticky wet weather gear is sweaty yucky in the heat. I thought when they said we were going to a waterfall we would be driving through it, hence wet weather gear but it was just a viewing point to see a not too spectacular waterfall, they haven’t had much rain lately.

And we were just wearing the wet weather gear for the dust. If I’d known that I think I would have gone with dust covered clothes. At least we recovered our own ATV at this stop, just as well bc, as we were leaving the waterfall, MGM said ‘you’re driving’. To which I responded with a firm ‘no’ and yet I did.

It is a constant surprise to me that I trust him more than I trust me. If he says I can do a thing, I believe him and then I do it. And oh my goodness it was such white-knuckley squealy fun. Holding on to that wheel when we hit the pot holes though, that was harder than MGM made it look. Our guide told us we MUST drive through the potholes, not around them, & by now I was a tiny bit terrified of that guide so I hit every pothole in my path. I suspect she told us to hit them not for ‘safety reasons’ but bc screaming bumpy fun!

We got back to town past some more pretty scenery.