Jim Free's Big Vacation: Last 3 Days, Hendrix Guitar, and More

On Friday September 6th, our cruise ship pulled into Ketchikan Alaska. Chris and I signed up to do the Seafood Tasting, Wildlife Cruise, and Historic Cannery Tour. We got off our ship and got on a smaller boat that took us on a wildlife tour.

We got to see eagles, seals, and deer, but no whales or dolphins on that excursion. We did see some whales while we are on the cruise ship, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not get any pictures of them.

The boat took us to what used to be a salmon cannery. It was in operation in the early nineteen hundreds until Alaska became a state and the country imposed their labor laws on the industry. The cannery was eventually purchased by the Libby's Corporation. And after the labor laws were put into effect, they just abandoned the factory.

The tour guides told us the horrifying story of the employees that worked there. It was almost like slave labor. They were forced to work at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for approximately $20 a month.

They were secluded from civilization so they had to sleep in these dorms that would get really cold at night and especially during the winter. Some of the machinery was still there so they showed us how the process of canning salmon works.

At each stop of the tour, they had different varieties of seafood for us to try. It was cooked by a chef on site, and no it wasn't canned salmon.

We were only in Ketchikan for five and a half hours then the ship set sail for Victoria British Columbia. We arrived there on Saturday around 6:30 pm. We only had 5 hours there so we found a local microbrew and enjoyed a couple of drinks before going on a tour of the famous hotel in town, and then made our way back to the ship.

Sunday morning at 7, we were back in Seattle and we were able to deboard the ship at 10 am. We had 12 hours to spend in Seattle before we flew back home so we decided to go to MoPOP. That's the Museum of Popular Culture in Seattle Washington.

Some of the exhibits included the Pearl Jam exhibit, the Nirvana exhibit, and the Jimi Hendrix exhibit to name a few. There were also exhibits the featured artifacts from movies and TV shows. One of the coolest parts about MoPOP is in the Jimi Hendrix room. It's his guitar that he played at Woodstock. I have a picture of that below.