Exclusive Mountaintop Flightseeing & Crab Feast

Well, this excursion was even more exclusive than I had expected. Our float plan only fits 5 people plus the pilot, so I was glad I booked it early. It was two other couples and me. Since I was by myself, I got the co-pilot seat and had just an amazing view from up front. I wasn't sure how taking off and landing in water would go, but I was just amazed at how smooth it was compared to regular airplanes...I would take a float plane anyday.

We also put on headsets that gave us an audio tour that told us what we were looking at, and gave us a general history of the vicinity. It was very interesting and informative. We landed on the water with hardly any effort and basically floated toward the George Inlet Lodge. When we docked, we climbed out onto the little pier and walked up to the lodge.

The table was all set with five place settings and they gave us a short history of the lodge. It had been floated down the river from approximately 75-100 miles away. Unfortunately, they had been so consumed with the process of floating it that they had begun floating it before they realized that they hadn't purchased the land for it yet. Then we had a delicious salad, and plenty of dungess crab that we had to crack and use the crab cracking pliers. I cracked an entire crab and ate it. It was absolutely delicious! We followed it up with Alaskan blueberry cheesecake. Then I climbed up 79 steps to a main road to board a tour bus. The other two couple (since they were older) were given a van ride up the very steep hill. We then had an entire gray line tour bus entirely to ourselves while the driver gave us a nice tour on the way back into Ketchikan. Then I quickly walked around the town, but didn't have much time before I had to be back on the ms Amsterdam so that we could depart. I was very dissapointed that we only had a few hours to spend, as we docked around 7 am, and had to be back on the ship at 12:30 pm. I would have loved to spend more time there.

For more history or information on this tour, check it out here.