We sailed in through thick morning mist and suddenly houses on stilts appeared like something from a fairy tale. The smell hit first — low tide, smoked salmon, and wet cedar. Ketchikan gets 162 inches of rain a year and wears it proudly; everything is green, mossy, dripping. This is Alaska's "First City," so named because it's the first major Alaskan port that northbound cruise ships encounter after leaving Seattle or Vancouver, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. You step off the ship and immediately feel you've entered a different world — one where totem poles stand sentinel in misty rainforests, where salmon fight upstream through the heart of downtown, and where the boundary between wilderness and civilization feels beautifully blurred.

Ketchikan sits as Alaska's most southerly town, perched on Revillagigedo Island in the Inside Passage where the Tlingit people established fishing camps thousands of years ago. They came every summer to harvest the salmon runs in Ketchikan Creek, and that heritage lives on — nearly one in five residents today claims Tlingit, Haida, or Tsimshian descent. The town holds one of the largest collections of standing totem poles in Alaska, perhaps in the world, and walking among them is like stepping into a forest cathedral of stories carved in cedar. These aren't museum pieces behind glass; they stand in clearings and along forest trails, weathering and aging as they were meant to, telling stories of Raven and Eagle clans that stretch back millennia.

We started at Saxman Totem Park, where more than twenty poles carved in the 1940s stand in a clearing — a deliberate effort by master carvers to preserve Tlingit culture when old village sites were being abandoned. The carving shed was active, cedar chips flying, an elder working on a new Raven pole while apprentices watched and learned. The smell of fresh-cut cedar filled the air, and the carver explained how each figure on the pole represents a story, a family crest, or a lesson passed down through generations. Then we visited the Totem Heritage Center downtown, which protects genuine 19th-century poles rescued from abandoned Native villages — not replicas, but weathered originals over 160 years old. At Totem Bight State Park we walked the forest trail past towering poles, some 50 feet tall, carved from single cedar logs, their colors faded to that perfect red-black-teal that only decades of rain can paint. The clan house smelled of cedar smoke and salt; the ranger sang a Tlingit song inside and the acoustics raised every hair on my arms. I felt tears welling unexpectedly — the sound carried centuries of history and survival.

The absolute highlight was the Misty Fjords floatplane. I'd booked ahead knowing this was a weather-dependent excursion, and we got lucky with a window of visibility. The takeoff from the harbor was exhilarating — floatplanes accelerate across the water and lift off in a spray of white, then suddenly you're climbing over the most dramatic landscape imaginable. We flew low over endless forest and waterfalls before landing on a mountain lake so remote the silence rang in my ears. The pilot cut the engine and we just drifted between 3,000-foot granite walls while a lone harbor seal watched us. I saw mountain goats like white specks on cliffs and a black bear fishing far below. The scale of Misty Fjords is almost incomprehensible from the air — sheer granite walls rising straight from the water, waterfalls tumbling hundreds of feet, and nothing but wilderness in every direction.

Back in town we wandered Creek Street, and it delivered everything I'd hoped for: a crooked wooden boardwalk on stilts over Ketchikan Creek, painted houses in crimson and jade and gold clinging to the hillside like they might slide into the water at any moment. In the 1920s this was the red-light district — bars and brothels servicing fishermen and loggers who flooded into town during salmon season — and Dolly's House Museum tells that story without flinching. At the boardwalk's entrance stands the Chief Johnson Totem Pole, a 55-foot cedar monument honoring the Tlingit leader who helped his people navigate changing times. We stood there in late July watching hundreds of salmon fight upstream to spawn in the same creek where their ancestors have returned for millennia — Ketchikan calls itself the "Salmon Capital of the World" and it's no idle boast.

We had the best king salmon of the trip at Alaska Fish House — grilled simply with lemon and eaten on the dock while sea lions barked for scraps beneath us, water lapping under the boardwalks at high tide. The fish was so fresh it practically melted, and the setting couldn't be more authentically Alaskan. Downtown Ketchikan is compact and walkable, filled with galleries selling Native art, jewelry shops with hand-carved silver, and the famous Red Dog Saloon with its sawdust floors and mounted animal heads.

The pros: most colorful, character-filled town in Alaska with world-class totems and the most accessible Native cultural experiences. Creek Street is genuinely charming, not touristy-charming. The Misty Fjords floatplane landing is transformational. Everything is walkable from the ship.

The cons: it rains constantly (but honestly, that's part of the charm — the rain makes everything so green and dramatic), and it gets very crowded when multiple ships are in port. Book your flightseeing early and have a backup plan for weather cancellations.

Ketchikan isn't the biggest Alaska port or the most famous, but it might be the most authentic. The totem poles, the rainforest, the salmon, the colorful boardwalks on stilts — this is the Alaska you came to see, and it delivers from the moment you step off the gangway.