Travel Articles: Alaska

The remote wilderness of Alaska beckons, and we’re here to help you plan your trip with our guide to choosing the best small ship cruise for your visit to this natural northern paradise. Home to grizzly bears, eagles, wolves, caribou, moose, and other majestic creatures, small ship cruises give you a more up-close encounter with the amazing …

Juneau, Glacier Bay National Park, Haines, Sitka, Wrangell, and Thorne Bay are the best ports of call for cruises throughout Alaska. The state of Alaska is unrivaled in the United States as a place to discover the breathtaking wilderness, history, and culture that surrounds the Northwest.

Juneau

Often a starting point for Alaska cruises, the …

Juneau, Glacier Bay National Park, Haines, Sitka, Wrangell, and Thorne Bay are the best ports of call for cruises throughout Alaska. The state of Alaska is unrivaled in the United States as a place to discover the breathtaking wilderness, history, and culture that surrounds the Northwest.

The best time to take an Alaskan cruise is April through September with July and August being the highest season attracting the most travelers. Convention holds that the best months to cruise Alaska are July and August when the temperatures are at their highest and the weather is generally sunnier. However, the best time for Alaska cruises depends on your personal preferences.

A quick end-of-summer trip, based around a wedding of old friends in Homer, Alaska. But as a trip planner at Adventure Life, one can never pass up the opportunity to explore a new place. And surprise... more old friends at the lodge in Denali National Park!

Alaska's natural riches offer visitors the chance the explore some of the United State's most amazing landscapes. Discover locations such as Katmai National Park, Inside Passage, Glacier Bay National Park, Fairbanks, or Denali National Park for a remarkable experience.

An incredible 8 days in Alaska filled with wildlife, adventure, cultural encounters, laughter, and unexpected SUNSHINE!

Wherein my husband and I take our 6-month-old on a self-drive tour in Alaska. We rented a camper van and explored the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. And we learned how (and how not!) to travel with baby.

The Kapitan Khlebnikov is back in action! This renowned ice breaker vessel is able to reach remote polar regions that are inaccessible to most other passenger expedition ships. This means access to places rarely explored by tourists. Perhaps it will provide the perfect way for you to explore the Arctic.

One of our favorite ship operators,UnCruise Adventures, has become the FIRST cruise line to partner with Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. This means a formal promiseto serve only seafood caught or farmed byocean-friendly techniques. "We're committed to serving sustainable seafood across our fleet of yachts and small ships," …

SS Legacy parked in front of a waterfall

On the SS Legacy, the cruising style is categorized as a "Heritage Adventure" incorporating historical exhibits ashore and onboard character reenactments. History comes to life as your heritage guides reminisce the tales of yesteryear. Have a better understanding of Alaska's past and present …

Ancestors of the Alaska Natives are believed to have migrated into the area thousands of years ago then never moved any farther south. Throughout the Arctic and northern areas, these people established varying indigenous cultures. Tlingit, Haida, and Inupiaq are just a few of the various indigenous groups of Alaska.

Alaska's history is alive on board the small-ship, SS Legacy. Characters in Alaska's complex history like conservationist John Muir, Gold Rush "stampeders" and missionaries join travelers on cruises through the Inside Passage. Referred to as heritage guides, this team of historic re-enactors provides a distinct onboard atmosphere by portraying a …

A while back, the CN Traveler guide listed a number of our cruises as some of their top destinations, and with great reason! Here are the cruises they featured from each corner of the globe.

What was on the menu? King crab legs! Throw in a little competition and you have a crab eating frenzy. The crew challenged us to eat more pounds of crab legs than the previous cruise ship. Did we take them up on that challenge? You bet your crab leg we did! And guess who won? You betcha, we did! After reveling in our win and tummies full, we …

Not only did we get the opportunity to view spectacular wildlife and landscapes on our cruise, but we also got to experience it through hiking, kayaking, small-boat rides that brought us thrillingly close to waterfalls and glaciers, and diving into the chilly Alaskan waters for a Polar Plunge! Boy was that water cold, but so exciting!

I highly recommend Alaskan Dream Cruises if you want to see amazing landscapes and wildlife, learn about Alaskan culture from Alaskans themselves, and meet fellow passengers that you can forge deep friendships with! This cruise line is unique because it's more intimate than a large cruise line and you have better access to wildlife and nature …

Tracy Arm was equally amazing for its majestic landscapes! It provided our first glimpse of Alaska's stunning, ice-blue glaciers and yet another glimpse of the abundant wildlife, including harbor seals, pigeon guillemots, Glaucous-winged gulls, and a lot of humpback whales!

Glacier Bay and Tracy Arm were two of my favorite stops of the trip! Glacier Bay National Park provided an even more stunning display of wildlife than we'd seen in Sitka. We saw sea otters, a brown bear, mountain goats, a lone grey wolf, humpback whales, harbor seals, tufted puffins, and many other sea birds. One of my favorite stops was the …

Humpback whales are so quintessential to Southeast Alaska's Inside Passage that I was surprised when we didn't stop to see any on the first day of our cruise in Glacier Bay National Park on the National Geographic Quest. Like most of the small ships, the National Geographic Quest has an open bridge. We had a wonderful Captain and Chief …

If the day’s excursions don’t necessarily speak to a traveler, Camp Denali and North Face Lodge offer multiple options for independent exploration. Similar to their exclusive rights to guide hikes in the Wilderness Zone, Camp Denali and North Face Lodge are the only property with rights to canoe on Wonder Lake. While it was pouring …

Camp Denali and North Face Lodge are the sole proprietors in Kantishna with historic rights to guide travelers on hikes inside the Wilderness Zone of Denali National Park. So every day, these properties starts with a briefing of the day’s three excursion options. Each day has a difficult hike, a medium hike and a “foray”. Since …

Denali’s park road is only open to private vehicles for the first 15 miles of its 90+ mile length. The remaining stretch is accessible only via park buses or via buses owned by the lodges at the end of the road, in Kantishna. For traveler’s staying at lodges such as Camp Denali, North Face or Denali Backcountry, aligning your arrival …

There are three distinct “bases” from which to explore Denali National Park. Each certainly has it’s merits, and there’s nothing to say a traveler cannot employ more than one “base” during any given trip.

Talkeetna is the closest to Anchorage itself and is accessible by bus, train or car. With (distant) views …