This trip ending really bites.

Our final two stops on the tour were more about culture than about scenery.
Ketchikan featured a tour of Saxman Native Village, a village of local Tlingit Indians.

There were many totem poles.


This particular village had been located on an island 80 miles to the south, where they had lived peacefully for hundreds of years. Christian missionaries, who don't know the meaning of leaving people in peace, relocated them to Ketchikan so they could be "modernized". What's worse is that most of their totem poles were burned or otherwise destroyed while they watched, because they were thought to be pagan idols, and weren't about Jesus. Once the missionaries realized that totem poles tell stories and histories, and aren't worshiped, they were like, "oops, my bad". Chalk another culture destroyed up to ignorance and intolerance. The photo above the one directly above shows one of the few surviving poles from the original village, which was retrieved when the Tlingit returned to the original village to visit and salvage 50 years after the christian interference.
As you can guess by the presence of totem poles, the area is heavily forested. It is part of the Pacific Northwest Temperate Rain Forest.

Here's the village as seen from the boat.

Not far from the village, there was a Bald Eagle's nest, with this fellow standing guard.


In Ketchikan, they have what they call "wooden streets" they are stairways and walkways made of wood that are assigned street names. You have to be in good shape to be a mailman in Ketchikan.

If you were wondering where the estranged wife of the Burger King wound up, she's in Alaska.


Here's Ketchikan:


We made a brief stop in Victoria, British Columbia before returning to Seattle. My mother and I visited a Toussad's wax museum. I didn't take many pictures. But, here's the Victoria Waterfront, and a Panorama of The Empress hotel, built in 1904.



On my flight back, I didn't pass over Yosemite again, as I'd hoped. Instead the plane followed the coastline down to San Diego. I had an amazing view of the Golden Gate bridge in the distance, with fog rolling in beyond it. But, my camera wouldn't focus on it, due to my window not being the clearest. Too bad I couldn't share that with you.