Wondering what the best excursions are in Ketchican. We will be there in late May....thanks for any help!

More best than you can do on 10 trips. Best is to look over a shore excursion list and narrow down your interests. There is no point recommending tours of no interest. But the most popular is probably a Misty Fjords floatplane tour, independents do a superior job compared to the ship contractors in my opinion. Request their visitor guide www.visit-ketchikan.com

Misty Fjords sounds like what we SHOULD have done in Ketchikan. We did an excursion that sounded neat - it was 4wd adventure and canoe trip. The roads were logging roads that were dusty and SUPER bumpy. The forests we were driving through had all been logged and weren't all that pretty. The lake we canoed on was neat, but it was a very short ride on a war canoe with people paddling who didn't know what they were doing. Stay away from that one.

We're signed up to go independently to kayak AWAY from the "downtown" Ketchikan area and were promised no more than 6 people would be kayaking in the same place so it should be quite serene. I do have concerns about kayaking in the rain...it apparently rains A LOT in that area, so we'll see.

We did the Misty Fjords excursion that included a boat ride to the Fjords. En route we stopped at an area where seals had hauled out on rocks, and we encountered Orcas who came right up to the boat. The Captain stopped at length during these unexpected encounters, which were a highlight. After cruising around Misty Fjords, we tied up to a floating dock and boarded floatplanes for the return trip to Ketchikan. The people who came in on those planes took our place on the boat for the trip back. Personally, I thought this was a better option than the floatplane-only excursion where you do land on the water and get to step out on the pontoons, but don't get to see much of Misty Fjords except from the air. We got the best of both worlds. (Note of caution: the open water before you get to Misty Fjords can be rough, so keep that in mind. They handed out ginger pills for those who needed them when the waters got rough.)

We did this excursion in the afternoon. In the morning we walked through town and up to the salmon hatchery for a tour before walking back down via the Married Man's Trail.

Whatever you do, have a great time - and be prepared for some rain .

eenusa;
What was the name of the company you used? Sounds like you had a good excursion!