The wife and I were planning on taking the Alaska cruise next summer. An old roommate just semi-retired and moved to Sitka and I would like to visit him for a few days, which doesn't work with a cruise. Anybody know if I can still see the good cruise sites w/o going on the full cruise? What are the don't miss sites. Definitely want to do the rail/bus trip.
Alaska travel
- Thread starter dvmted
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I went to Alaska when I was younger and I remember we went on a day cruise, although I am not sure where it was. I would highly reccommend visiting Denali state park.
We took the helicopter ride to fly over and land on a glacier. One of the coolest things we've done. I think it was in Sitka where you could take either a bus or train to a mining camp and across the Canadian border. Our cruise ship went into a bay to see a glacier coming into the sea. It was cool getting into the bay kind of like a Norweigian fjord. While we were there we saw numerous smaller boats with passengers (that followed us out of the bay so that the cruise ship would push the icebergs out of the way). I would think that the view from the smaller ships would have been even more impressive than the angle we had. We didn't go to the Indian camps where they had totem poles and salmon dinner (don't think that was Sitka anyway). Some place we sailed through a place with a huge number of bald eagles soaring around. Finally sailing through the inside passage is pretty cool. We saw whales and a bear swimming to the mainland from one of the islands.
My brother, an ISU grad, owns a large travel business in Alaska, and one of his companies is Explore Tours which arranges individual trips to Alaska, google it and check out the web site, it might help. I have been to Alaska over 15 times and it is a great place to visit, it is a big state so take a lot of time to see it!
Thanks for the info everyone. Anyone know if smaller boats go to the Inside Passage? We'll probably do some fishing in Sitka as my buddy has a boat and fishes 3-4 days a week when he's not working. He's an MD with Canadian Health and enjoys working 1 out of 3 weeks after 25 years in the states. He says there are no doctors in Canada that work over 36 hours a week and the first thing you have to learn in the Canadian system is how to say "You want what?"
