Ketchikan, Alaska

Ketchikan was by far my favorite stop in Alaska. The town was small and cute, without being overrun by hippies and drop-houses. The people were also really friendly and down to Earth. As is typical in Alaska, it was overcast the whole morning.




Our excursion for the day was to do the Ziplines. I was naively optimistic about the whole thing. As we were getting suited up and the young people running the show were going over the rules and safety items, I kept thinking to myself "yeah, yeah, we just strap ourselves onto the wires and fly across the dang thing...big deal". Even the first line (the practice one) was like no big deal. I had issues with braking, but I figured I'd work it out fairly quickly.





Well, after all 9 members of our group were ready to move on, we zipped out to the second platform. As soon as I got there, I stepped onto the thin piece of plywood which was supposed to be our gathering spot while we waited for each person to take their turn, looked over the edge, and almost crapped myself! The fact that we were like 150ft up in the air at that point, standing on a swaying treehouse with no walls or ceiling, was enough to knock the cocky right out of me.



I could tell that Raf was freaked out at this point too, because he couldn't release his deathgrip on the camera for me to take a picture of him. Being the dedicated photographer and family journalist that he is, though, he still managed to snap some pretty good photos of me flying across.


The adrenaline rush was awesome, and by the time we got to the final run or two, we were acting much less like sissys and actually enjoying ourselves. Our guide convinced Raf to let go of the camera for a minute so that he could take a picture of the two of us crossing the little bridge thingy.






It was a great day and this turned out to be one of the highlights of the whole week!



All in all, we had a wonderful week alone, but we are happy to be home and with our little man again.