You hear stories. But until you see day refusing to become night in the northern latitudes, you, too, may have a hard time buying it.
Before boarding an Alaska Airlines flight from Denver to Seattle and then on to Anchorage last June for a seven-day cruise, the closest thing I had experienced to this phenomenon was the abridged night during transatlantic flights.
Travel reminds you that time is a marvel. Alaska’s summertime triumph of daylight over darkness turns out to be even more touching as the sun insists on illuminating the Canadian mountains and then the crenulated majesty of Chugach Range. We left Sea-Tac International Airport with night seemingly falling when someone turned up the dimmer ever so gently like Charles Boyer in “Gaslight.”
But nature isn’t trying to drive you mad, just stun you with its possibilities.
We committed to an Alaskan cruise because the folks were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Seven years earlier, a surf-and-turf tour of the 49th state gave these desert-dwelling retirees their first onboard venture.
It led, as cruises often do, to something of an addiction.
My mate and I flew into Anchorage the night before the cruise. Early the next afternoon we boarded a motorcoach for the brief ride to Whittier. The stay in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, turned out to be too short.
The abbreviated experience became something of a theme. Anchorage and Juneau are the Alaskan cities that hint at traits richer than their place on summer cruise itineraries.
A breakfast spent gabbing over meaty salmon cakes and poached eggs at the Snow City Cafe’s counter with an opinionated federal law enforcement agent made us wish we had come to town with more than a day to wander.
The downtown market, a festive May-to-September affair, boasts hundreds of food vendors, craftspeople, and local musicians. The guys rocking out one sunny Saturday morning weren’t exceptional – far from it. But their hunger and the music-club ads carried in the local alternative paper hinted at an indigenous indie music scene worth a night of investigating.
Five days later, Juneau presented a slightly different problem. The Sapphire moored shortly after 6 a.m. and would depart at around 4 p.m. Plenty of time to explore the only U.S. mainland capital city reachable by air and sea but not by road. Only we’d agreed in advance to take the 5 1/2-hour Whale Watching and Orca Point Lodge excursion.
But more on that later.
Shoreline beauty abounds
In the months since a small town called the Sapphire Princess, population 3,906, docked in Vancouver, British Columbia, it occurred to me: “Of course that is the sort of trip I’d take with my folks.”
I’d been raised to watch a world slide by and imagine myself as part of its wild nature by a childhood spent road-tripping through the mountain West, as well as prairies and farmland.
After all, my brother and I grew up noses pressed to the windows of a Chrysler 300 as it muscled its way from Denver to Los Angeles or Denver to Chicago on family vacations. Watching as vast landscapes pass feels familiar.
Few vistas turn out to be as persistently awesome as the Gulf of Alaska shoreline.
Not that Princess made it easy. Our stateroom was a letdown. It wasn’t as elegantly comfy as the one I had on the Holland America’s Rotterdam two years earlier. That cabin had a cleverly economical bathroom (with tub) and was on a much lower deck. This one cost more, and the bathroom was an afterthought.
The folks’ suite was partitioned to make every room tiny. The view they paid handsomely for was bisected terrace. The deck they paid handsomely for combined an apartment complex’s lack of privacy with the view you’d get sitting behind the railing at a theater.
There is nothing harder to stomach than your aging parents’ disappointment. It requires a case of Pepcid.
To Princess’ credit, the Sapphire’s public spaces outshine the private. The gym is first-rate. Elliptical trainers, treadmills and bikes are set up to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The Internet cafe, open 24/7, is a foxy mix of sleek computer stations, good light and espresso bar. The beckoning space was great, except there was zero connectivity for at least five of the seven days at sea. (Memo to Princess: Never promise workaholics the possibility of getting things done on a vacation and then make it impossible.)
In spite of all the kvetching about the ways in which Princess thwarted the perfect holiday, something humbling happened on the way from Whittier to Vancouver: When our grousing reached its crankiest pitch, Alaska always came to the rescue.
If dinner was underwhelming (far too often), there was our stateroom with a view. We moaned “alas,” the cosmos answered “Alaska.”
Beyond the sliding doors and deck with its tacky plastic patio furniture was forgiveness and magnificence, waterways and peaks.
Glacier Bay: unyieldingly wild
A rainy, overcast first day through College Fjord yielded to the most decisive rebuke of all: Glacier Bay.
Don’t think of the abundant beauty as simply getting what you paid for. This land asks you to bear witness to something that refuses to be owned: a vast wilderness of rock, retreating ice, acres of pine, and water more milky jade than blue.
“This was my first general view of Glacier Bay, a solitude of ice and snow and new-born rocks, dim, dreary, mysterious,” wrote the great American naturalist John Muir on his 1869 voyage into what Indian guides called Sit-a-da-kay, or Ice Bay.
It was our third day when the Sapphire picked up national park rangers near Bartlett Cove and headed into a day-long wade of Glacier Bay.
According to the ship’s cruise log, the day was “overcast.” But sense memory and the lion’s share of photos suggest otherwise.
Every outdoor chair was occupied. Passengers poured on deck for the warmth of the sun and frothing heat of Jacuzzis. They hoped to catch the sound if not the sight of calving ice.
Small bergs would drift by. Gulls were the predominant and vocal wildlife, but a dolphin jetted nearby. The sea was smooth. Diminutive sightseeing vessels shared the waterway. Their scale made one wonder, what must it be like to be dwarfed by the scenery, as opposed to seeing it from the nautical version of the Empire State Building?
We had none of the inclement weather Muir and his brave and modest band of travelers encountered. The boulders were no longer infants. Dreary had turned dazzling.
Yet the mystery Muir noted still stands out no matter which way you gaze.
The ever-beckoning shoreline had a kind of engaging, trickster constancy. For true monotony, you could venture into the Sapphire’s dining rooms. Quickly, the whole white tablecloth service had worn thin because it could not mask what turned out to be middling meal after banal meal. It’s not that the menus are short on options – even for vegetarians – they’re just short on flavor.
We tried to escape this rut through the ship’s steakhouse or Italian restaurant – but we were too late. Others had the same hankering and beat us to their reservation lines.
Civilization encroaches
Although our June voyage was a southward one, you’ll likely experience a similar jolt of rapture traveling from Vancouver north. Queen Charlotte Strait, Gordon Channel, Hecate Strait were just as persuasively rich.
As day and night began to regain their equilibrium, the sun shone on pine barrens, coves and seemingly unabated woods. There were stars at night. Heck, there was night.
Skagway’s and Ketchikan’s personalities were nearly doused by too many shops peddling the same postcards, tees, jewelry and more of those rounded-blade Ulus. (Favorite sign: “No one under 18 allowed to handle knives.”) No wonder each port’s remarkably fine independent bookstore became a rich atoll.
I found myself buying books about the Alaska the marketplace obscured: John McPhee’s “Coming into the Country” from the Skaguay News Depot on Day 4. After an informative visit to the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan (Day 6), I stumbled on Parnassus Books and a copy of Muir’s “Travels In Alaska.”
There is little like a naturalist’s unbridled enthusiasm to connect you to our world of wonder.
Take the young one on the rain-swept deck of the whale-watching catamaran plowing through Stephens Passage. “Wow!” she declared with surprise after we were treated to multiple sightings of breaching humpbacks with calves. Wow, indeed.
Staff writer Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
Insider’s Guide
GET THERE
To fly into Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, for a Whittier departure, expect to spend around $500 for a round-trip flight. Alaska Airlines and its partner Horizon Air have round-trip fares starting at around $500 for a late-June departure; Frontier offers a $632 round trip. Expedia online fares start at $513 round-trip.
CRUISE
From May to September the Alaskan coast is a busy highway of cruise ships, including Princess, Carnival, Holland America, Norwegian, Celebrity, Royal Caribbean and Radiance – to name a few – offering voyages.
In addition to the Princess’ seven-day Voyage of the Glaciers and seven-day Inside Passage journeys, the cruise line offers a combination surf-and-turf adventure, seven days onboard and then four- to-10 days exploring the Alaskan wilderness by train and motorcoach, with stays at Princess’ wilderness lodges.
Ships set sail late May through late September. Price varies for accommodations. Sample Sapphire Princess’ Voyage of the Glaciers fares: Interior $899; Oceanview $948; Balcony $1,899; Mini Suite $2,199; Suite $3,559. Princess offers pre-cruise and post-cruise “extend your stay” packages for its ports of call. Our choice in Vancouver was the lovely Westin Bayshore; $149 per person the first night; $99 per person.
Princess offers an abundance of excursions to match different ambitions and budgets. The most expensive out of Juneau: $899 for a private sightseeing tour; $509 for Dog Sledding on the Mendenhall Glacier. The least: $36 for the Mendenhall Glacier Explorer motorcoach tour. On the 5 1/2-hour Whale Watching and Orca Point Lodge from Juneau, you take a motorcoach to a dock, where a catamaran-style boat with naturalists onboard takes you into the humpback whale rich Stephens Passage. Midway through the fun, you dock at the remote log cabin lodge for lunch (salmon, naturally). So certain is the tour company of spotting a whale that if you don’t, partial refunds are offered. Cost: $159 adults, $79 children 12 and under (May 1-Sept. 30).
STAY AND SHOP
The Anchorage downtown Saturday market (May-September) is a short wander from a number of hotels, among them the classy, if slightly antique, Captain Cook Hotel, 939 W. Fifth Ave., Anchorage, 800-843-1950, captaincook.com. Rates start at $274 a night.
The market has row upon row of local crafts; people selling jewelry, clothing and my favorite, a kite that looks like a gull caught on an updraft. Vendors hawk produce, smoked salmon, salmon tacos, reindeer sausages and jerky, and homemade ice cream. Local performers take to the modest bandstand. Free. Located at 300 C St.
Alaska by the books: Local, independent bookstores give you a sense of the ambitions and thoughtful soul of a place beyond the T-shirts, ubiquitous Ulu knives and canned salmon. Two worth a good browsing: Skaguay News Depot & Books in Skagway (264 Broadway, 907-983-3354) and Parnassus Books in Ketchikan (5 Creek St., upstairs, 907-225-7690.
DINE
Anchorage’s Snow City Cafe (Fourth Avenue and L Street, 907-272-CITY, snowcitycafe@juno.com) is one of those great discoveries that, ahem, everyone makes. The funky-friendly eatery had a long wait the morning bus convoys were taking passengers to ships. Pressed for time? Sit at the counter. The service is friendly, and your neighbor might have a local’s tart perspective on the allure and pitfalls of living in Alaska’s biggest city, especially during high season. Breakfasts delights: the Ship Creek Benedict – two poached eggs and grilled Snow City salmon cakes on a toasted English muffin topped with homemade hollandaise and diced red onion, served with hash browns. For vegetarians: Tofu Scramble – three eggs scrambled with marinated and baked tofu, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and bean sprouts, served with hash browns and toast.
In Juneau, check out The Alaskan Fudge Company (195 S. Franklin St., 800-323-8343, alaskanfudgecompany
.com). This confectionaire’s delectables were served near the end of the whale-watching tour. Schweeet! And smart, because as soon as the bus dropped us at the dock we high-tailed it to the family-owned enterprise nearby for some Glacier Bay Walnut decadence.
– Lisa Kennedy
