We booked excursions in every port. Warning if you’re doing an Alaska cruise the excursions are really expensive. They were amazing but very pricey. And besides excursions most of the towns we visited were just a conglomeration of jewelry stores and souvenir stores. Apparently Tanzanite (a blue stone with violet overtones more rare than diamonds per the commercials) is the big seller. Skagway especially isn’t much more than just the tourist shops.
In Skagway we did the White Pass Railway and Kayak excursion. We went up on the train. Unfortunately our excursion had exclusive use of the first car. Which meant we got to suck diesel exhaust the whole way. And the noise was so much we couldn’t hear any of the canned narration. But it’s a beautiful trip and you get to see lots of amazing scenery. Once we crossed into Canada the train stops and goes back. We got off there and met our guides for Kayaking. The lake we were kayaking on is next to the train station so we literally just walked across the parking lot.
The guides were great and got us all set with equipment and into the kayaks. Unfortunately for Madz I’m not in the best kayaking shape so she ended up doing most of the work. She still enjoyed it but I’m betting she’ll never get in a kayak with me again. We went around the lake for about an hour then came back. It was really beautiful and quiet. Then we took a bus ride back down to the ship. One of the kayak guides who’s a year round local went back with us and gave us a lot of history and such which was very nice. They made a stop in town for anyone who wanted to shop more then back to the ships.
Juneau we all did different excursions. I did the helicopter glacier walk. They picked us up and we drove to the airport, the bus driver pointed things out along the way. We then had a short training video and broke up into smaller groups and boarded the helicopters. We took a short ride to the Mendenhall Glacier. They flew us around a bit before we landed. We landed and they had guides already out on the glacier. We walked around for about a half hour, drank some glacier water and then the helicopters came back with the next group and we re-boarded. It was beautiful and absolutely worth the hefty pricetag. For me it was the perfect amount of time out on the glacier, it wasn’t very warm so about a half hour was just enough time.
Maddie did the Teen Only Helicopter Glacier Excursion. It was just for teenagers and a couple of the counselors from Vibe went along as chaperones. She had the best time ever she claims. They also took a bus to the airport and helicoptered out to the glacier but they landed in a different area and did a two hour hike. She got a lot of amazing photos and really did have a wonderful time.
Liz and Lisa did the Zipline and then a bus out to the glacier tour. They got picked up at the ship and drove to the ziplines, they said it was about a half hour drive. They loved the ziplines. Well Liz did, Lisa’s not great with heights but she lived. Then they took a bus out to the visitor center at the Glacier. I’m not sure how long they were out there and then came back to the ship.
Since my tour was shorter I got off the bus in “town” and walked around a bit. There were a lot more shops in Juneau that seemed more individually than corporate owned. I got a few things and had a quick lunch at Tracey’s Crab Shack, which was so amazingly good. I worked my way back to the Mt. Roberts Tram which is right near where the ships dock. It was kind of expensive, I want to say $25, but I rode up and it was an amazing view of Juneau. I’d been told that if you could see the top tram station from the ground to go but if not there would be no visibility up there so don’t. There were some trails and such up there but I was tired by then so I didn’t go far and then just came back down and went to the ship.
Ketchican was our shortest stop. We didn’t get docked till 1:30 and left around 7ish. We did the St. George Inlet Lodge crab feed and floatplane tour. This one we did the bus ride first up to the Lodge. It was a nice ride and we saw a bear and some eagles along the way. When we got there they took our group to a private room where we had our crab feed. The crab was absolutely wonderful and it was all you can eat. The waitress was nice but we saw some other groups after who were having leg stacking contests and such, seemed like their waitresses were a bit more fun. After we stuffed ourselves we puttered around and waited for the planes. They landed with another group then we got on. It was about a 30 minute ride back to the airport. We saw some mountain goats and other wildlife from the plane. We landed at the airport and it was a very short, maybe 10 minute, van ride back to the cruise dock. We had about an hour or so to wander around a little. I would have liked to have had more time as a lot of the less touristy areas were just a little too far for us to get to. And when we arrived there were already 3 ships docked but all were gone by the time we got back. A lot of the shops had already closed by the time we got there.
