Alaska Cruises and Alaska Cruise Tours: 
Adventuring to America's Last Frontier

• The coastal scenery is stunning. Most of southeastern Alaska is protected when cruising the Inside Passage, making for a calm, relaxing and enjoyable journey.
  
• An Alaskan Cruise Tour is an easy way to enjoy a comfortable vacation while experiencing fantastic scenery and historic ports of call. Seeing whales and eagles is common.
  
• Glacier cruises enable you to get close to Alaska's immense glaciers, often witnessing a calving where large blocks of ice break off in thunderous sound and fall to the water.
  
• Alaska’s towns were built on the waterways and coastlines, and some, such as Juneau, are only accessible by boat or air.
  
• The dock is often located near the center of town, so walking to the heart of things is relatively easy and enjoyable, and walking out of town for a nature hike is easy.

• Inside Passage cruises are roundtrip from Vancouver or Seattle, or
  
• Gulf of Alaska cruises are one-way trips between Vancouver and Whittier/Anchorage, either northbound or southbound.

Both itineraries generally include three ports of call, plus scenic cruising in one or two notable areas such as Glacier Bay, Hubbard Glacier or Misty Fjords.

< Alaskan Quick Tip: Fly to Seattle >
For savers, air taxes to fly to Seattle are less expensive than to Vancouver, and while most ships depart from Vancouver, there are a growing number of options from Seattle.

An Inside Passage cruise is a calm voyage with land readily visible on either side of the ship. Typical ports of call include some combination of Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, Juneau, Victoria and cruising scenic Glacier Bay National Park or Tracy Arm. Some cruise lines may offer a 10-day Inside Passage itinerary roundtrip from San Francisco.

The Gulf of Alaska cruise travels further north than the Inside Passage cruise, and includes open-ocean, which is generally calm during the cruising season. A typical itinerary includes some of the same ports, plus scenic College Fjord and Whittier, the embarkation or disembarkation point for Gulf of Alaska cruises, with a transfer to Anchorage (for flight connections) included. The Gulf of Alaska cruise is also the right choice if you are planning to further explore some of Alaska's interior on an Alaska Cruise Tour.

< Alaskan Quick Tip >
Most of us lack a true appreciation for Alaska's size. In selecting between the northbound and southbound Gulf of Alaska cruises, one consideration might be one's preference when to take the longer flight: enroute to one's vacation or at the end of it. From anywhere in North America the flight to Anchorage is farther than to Vancouver (or Seattle).