A crabby morning in Ketchikan

For our shore excursion in Ketchikan, the husband and I had fond memories from our first Alaskan cruise and convinced our traveling buddies we should do it again. And we were not disappointed. We kicked off the day with a drive to the George Inlet Lodge, where we embarked on a boat to pull crab traps. 

Our boat narrator was really informative and funny. Did you know we only eat male crabs because all of the females are thrown back into the water? We were given the chance to hold a crab, so I was able to snap a pic of R with hers. 

We got the added bonus of some eagle spotting. A fellow tour passenger asked about the eagles we were seeing in some of the trees lining the shore where this crab pot was located. So the narrator decided to throw out a bit of dead fish from his bait bucket to see if he could lure them closer. I bet he must do this on every tour because the eagles flew over like trained dogs for an easy snack. It was so cool.

I was toggling back and forth between video and photo, so I ended up with this rather funny shot of the eagle's feet and tail feathers mid-flight. Did you get a gander at those talons on its feet? No wonder they're so good at fishing. 

After returning to the lodge, we enjoyed an amazing all-you-can-eat crab lunch. They had an empty crab shell stacking contest amongst all of the dining tables. We gave it our best shot, as you can see in the pic below. Since cheating was encouraged, I'm afraid other folks were more imaginative than us (adding things like drinking glasses at the bottom of their crab pile) and won it. Honestly, I was so busy trying to get crab dipped into the melted butter and headed to my mouth that I couldn't be distracted by things that pulled me away from this delicious crab feast.