Princess CruisetourSeeing Alaska by Land and SeaBy Toni DabbsMore than once, I've found the allure of Alaska irresistible. I first cruised its southeast coastline 14 years ago. I enjoyed it so much that, seven years later, I took a longer cruise that called at more ports. This year, I was eager to cruise again, but I also wanted to see what I had heard called "the real Alaska," the interior cities and wilderness areas. Now, I wish I had done that the first time. This year, I chose a Princess Cruisetour. Like several other cruise lines, Princess has established a system of accommodations and ground transportation that allow a visitor to make all the necessary arrangements through a single company and to pay one all-inclusive price for a trip to Alaska by both land and sea. The system also makes it easy to book excursions, which are priced separately. I began my two-week adventure by flying to Fairbanks, Alaska's second-largest city, where Princess has a sprawling modern lodge on the banks of the Chena River. I had just one full day in town and wanted to experience as much of the city's culture and heritage as possible.
The next morning, I had breakfast aboard a Princess railcar dubbed the Midnight Sun Express then enjoyed the incredible scenery from a comfortable seat beneath the car's glass dome. We passed a mother moose and her calf, some Dall sheep and a bald eagle's nest, the bird's white head just visible above the rim, as we headed toward Denali National Park. My room at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge had a cozy "little cabin in the woods" ambiance, with a view across the Nenana River to the park. And the park is where I was headed on a Tundra Wildlife Tour. Only authorized vehicles are allowed more than 12 miles into Denali National Park, so a tour is a must for a visitor with limited time. Armed with box lunches and binoculars, we drove 91 miles into the park along a mostly gravel service road. During the seven-hour trip, we saw lots of caribou and Dall sheep, willow ptarmigans (the Alaska state bird), a golden eagle, hoary marmots, moose and even grizzly bears. What we didn't see was the elusive Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America, which tends to have its head in the clouds much of the time. The next morning, I was back on the Midnight Sun Express headed to the Mt. McKinley Princess Wildreness Lodge, my favorite of the four Princess lodges where I stayed. It has the feel of an isolated mountain village and an unobstructed view of Mt. McKinley, when the obstinate mountain shows its face.
The next leg of my journey was via motorcoach, a long drive from the Mt. McKinley lodge to the new Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge on the edge of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Although not as well known as Denali National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias is more than twice its size at 13.5 million acres, making it the largest property in the United States National Park Service system. It also contains nine of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S. The mountains were clearly visible the next morning, as I flew in a six-passenger Wrangell Mountain Air plane to visit the historic Kennecott Copper Corporation mine near the park's center. We did a little flightseeing along the way, taking a close look at a large ice fall and passing a deserted mine building perched precariously high above...well, nothing!
McCarthy, a town five miles away, provided "services" not available in the company mill town, such as gambling, moonshining and prostitution. Today, McCarthy is somewhat more sedate but stubbornly remains in private hands, even though it's in the middle of the national park. Many of its buildings are originals, as are its characters, reminding me of the old TV show "Northern Exposure." It still fulfills the role of support town, supplying restaurants, accommodations, transportation and guide services for people who come to the area for hiking, river rafting, ice climbing and other summer activities. The next day was a travel day: motorcoach to Valdez; catamaran to Whittier; and motorcoach to Seward, where I boarded the Star Princess for a Gulf of Alaska cruise. I couldn't believe the first week had flown by so fast, but I was looking forward to revisiting some of my favorite ports. The Star Princess is what is known as a post-Panamax ship, a ship that is too big to fit through the Panama Canal. But she's also beautiful, comfortable and conveniently designed. Best of all, the Star Princess offers Personal Choice Dining, which means that I didn't have to eat at the same time in the same place every day (although I could have, if I wanted to). In addition to three traditional dining rooms, the ship has two specialty restaurants (where additional charges apply). One night, I joined some shipmates for an Italian feast at Sabatini's Trattoria, and another night, we savored Southwestern fare at Tequila's. The 24-hour buffet was handy for breakfasts when I had early shore excursions, and the pizza and burger bars provided quick lunches.
Our first port of call was Skagway, which likely still looks much as it did in gold rush days. I took an excursion aboard the White Pass and Yukon Route railway, which runs close to the mountain trail climbed by countless stampeders more than 100 years ago. After returning to town, I picked up a map from the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park headquarters and explored Skagway's heritage structures. I still had time for the afternoon performance of "The Days of '98 Show."
The final day of any cruise is somewhat bittersweet, saying goodbye to new friends and trying to do as many favorite shipboard activities as possible. I charged a few items in the shops to my shipboard account, sent e-mail postcards from the Internet cafe, played some machines in the casino and enjoyed yet another of the ship's Broadway style shows.
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I began with an El Dorado Gold Mine excursion. The guide drove us on a short city tour and stopped at an oil pipeline viewpoint en route. At the mine, we were given an educational tour and the opportunity to try our hands at gold panning under the tutelage of Yukon Yonda and Dexter, who have worked area mines for at least 30 years.
After lunch, I boarded the Riverboat Discovery for an excursion along the Chena and Tanana Rivers. The paddle-wheeler made several stops. One was at the home of Iditarod dog sled racing champion Susan Butcher, who showed us her kennels and talked to us about her dogs and racing. Other stops included an Indian fishwheel and an Athabascan village, where we learned about smokehouses, caches, caribou and crafts.
I tried to get above the clouds for a look at the mountain on an Era helicopter tour. The pilot played cat-and-mouse with the clouds but soon gave up on sneaking a peek at the peak. He appeased us with sweeping glacial landscapes streaked blue with cravasses and studded with crystalline formations. He hovered over giant boulders, bottomless lakes and tunnels cut by rivers running through the ice. I forgot all about the mountain.
We were met at the airstrip by a representative of St. Elias Alpine Guides, who gave us a walking tour of the mine site, which sits like a ghost town among the glaciers. The 15-story concentration mill, power house, general store, post office and other structures that formed the company town still stand, now in the care of the National Park Service. They were built in the early days of the 20th century with construction materials brought to the remote site by horse cart in summer and dog sled in winter.
Two of my cruise days were spent gazing at glaciers, the first day in College Fjord and the next in Glacier Bay. I had visited both before but still found them fascinating. College Fjord is like a textbook of glaciers, with five major yet different tidewater glaciers clearly separated against a backdrop of forested mountains. Glacier Bay is more dramatic, with walls of ice sometimes almost surrounding the ship. It also has frequent calvings, when huge pieces of ice breaking free and crashing into the water.
I think that Juneau is one of the best shopping stops on an Alaska cruise, so I was pleased to discover that some stores opened as soon as the Star Princess docked. I wandered beyond downtown for a brief visit to the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, an octagonal gem crowned with a small gold onion dome. An amazing variety of excursions are available from Juneau, but I chose a tour of the Alaska Gastineau Mill, a hard rock gold mine hidden in the hills above the city, which operated between 1915 and 1921. Miners served as tour guides, not only telling us the mine's history but also demonstrating mining techniques and equipment inside the conveyor tunnel.
As the ship docked in Ketchikan, I looked with dismay at mini malls constructed since my last visit. Of course, with the fishing industry in decline, the residents need to find other sources of income, but many of the spaces for shops were vacant, so this didn't seem to be a solution. Fortunately, Creek Street was still the same, with its colorful shops built on pilings above Ketchikan Creek next to Dolly's House, now a museum, where the town's resident prostitute lived and worked from 1919 to 1952. I took a catamaran excursion to Guard Island Lighthouse, cruising past Alaska's oldest working cannery, a floating lumberjack camp and Totem Bight State Park. We saw harbor seals and humpback whales, but the highlight was having a bald eagle swoop to collect a fish from the water right beside our boat.
While I breakfasted the following morning, the Star Princess slipped peacefully beneath the Lions Gate Bridge and past Stanley Park. As the Vancouver skyline came into view, I already was planning what I want to do on my next Alaska cruisetour.