Our first city stop was Ketchikan. As our guide said, it's an old Tlingit (pronounce Clinkit) word for "on the wings of an eagle" and translated back into English means, land of many jewelry stores. And that pretty much summed it up. Jewelry and a boat load of rain. The city gets an average of 165 inches of rain a year, and it did it's best to drop a good chunk while we were there. But, there's a reason it's called a temperate rain forest area, so we knew it would be rainy going in. When you get on board the ship they give you an Alaskan coupon book to get you excited to go shopping when you get there, and we noticed that you could go to certain jewelry stores in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway and collect free gold coins to make a set. Since Brandon loves to collect coins, especially special collectible ones, this seemed like a great souvenir for him. So we spent our morning time trekking through rain and pushy jewelry clerks to collect the first 4 (of 8) coins for him. Then it was time to head back to the pier to get on the bus for our shore excursion to a Rainforest Sanctuary. When we got back we did a little shopping for souvenirs. We wanted to walk to the older part of town, but by then we were soaked to the bone and said screw it and went back to the ship, since there was only an hour left before all aboard anyway.
