A 10-day Alaskan cruise sounded like a good idea to Matt Burt. It turned out to be a dream come true.
“It was fantastic,” Burt said. “I’d always dreamed of going to Alaska but one of the fears might have been, that you’d get to the ports and it wouldn’t be what you thought it would be, but the majesty of Alaska is ever-present. I think there was only one day where you couldn’t see the coastline and the coastline was amazing. There was some rainforest, some green hills and others were snow-covered; it was just amazing. It was just fantastic to watch it go by. I had so many pictures that I didn’t need but every spot was more beautiful than the last one so I just kept taking more pictures.”
Burt and his party of 10 departed Columbus, Ohio on July 28 with a quick stop in Chicago before arriving in Seattle for check-in with the Oceania Cruise Line.
Departure was scheduled for 4:00 p.m., leaving the group plenty of time to maneuver through the check-in process.
“It was nice and smooth,” Burt said. “The transfer was nice and when you got on board they led you around, almost like a hotel check-in desk. There were multiple people to check you in and give you the pertinent information and to give you your door key.”
The cruise line prepared for a smooth check-in by mailing luggage tags weeks before departure. Those tags included cabin numbers for each guest.
“They take your bags, but I kept my carry-ons,” Burt said. “It was nice having them guide you where you need to go and the bags were waiting in the room, which was nice.”
Comfortably aboard, the group enjoyed a buffet lunch while the ship departed from the port.
“It was a low-key departure,” Burt said. “Seattle has an amazing view and it’s a working port, so you see all of the shipping containers, which was kind of cool, and you see the mountains. The Seattle skyline looks awesome when you’re pulling out of port.”
Throughout the week and a half cruise, the group enjoyed many ports and kept busy during the sailing days.
“There were a lot of activities offered onboard, but because there were 10 of us, we spent a lot of time on the decks,” Burt said. “They had some bingo and informational classes and some groups did stitching. They had a guy who gave informational talks on the wildlife we could see there. We just mainly enjoyed the leisure time. They had drink specials and one guy in our group challenged me to ping pong, the fool. We typically just spent time on the leisure deck playing cards and we had our ping pong tournament. We mainly just pulled up a table and gathered.”
That leisure time was necessary considering the amount of time the cruisers spent at the various ports.
The first stop led the group to Ketchikan, known for its many Native American totem poles and the Misty Fiords National Monument, which is a glacier-carved wilderness featuring snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, and salmon spawning streams.
Next up was a stop in Hoonah, a town of 760 mostly Tlingit people. The Tlingit community speaks Lingit, meaning “People of the Tides.”
“That was cool because it’s the only port that is independently owned by the native tribe there,” Burt said. “They formed their own corporation and the native people there are all working for it and have their own voting board. That seemed like a cool aspect, to know they’re benefiting from it.”
On the bus from the port to the town center, the group was treated to a history lesson of the community.
“Our bus driver, ‘Jimmy,’ spoke in the native tongue and told us his real name,” Burt said. “He gave us a great talk about what it meant to the people there and how they respect the local bear population. He said tourism had been a windfall but not necessarily for their people until they had that opportunity (to work the port). He took us through the town, which runs on two generators.”
During the stop in Hoonah, Burt and other members of the group participated in two different excursions including a whale watching tour and a quick zip-line through the Alaskan wilderness.
“We saw a bunch of Orca and a couple humpback but they mentioned that one particular spot is not common to have Orca and we had them right alongside the boat,” Burt said. “The zip-line was an amazing view, so everything about that was kind of cool.”
Another day of cruising allowed Burt and his companions to regroup for one of the highlights of the trip, a stop in Juneau, the state’s capital city.
It was there Burt enjoyed a helicopter tour of the city and also set foot on the 13-mile long Mendenhall Glacier, which boasts an elevation of 5,184 feet.
“The port in Juneau was a little bit touristy but a group of four of us went up in the helicopter and walked on the glacier,” Burt said. “I had never been in a helicopter before so that was awesome. There were three or four helicopters in a row and you could watch them go up in the mountain and see them do a dipping turn and we were like, ‘That’s about to be us.’ That was really cool.”
Standing on a glacier in the panhandle of Alaska turned out to be one of Burt’s favorite moments of the entire 10-day cruise.
“It was fantastic,” he said. “We got to stay up there all day and I got a chance to drink glacier water. It was OK, but I wasn’t going to be the guy who fell into the glacial stream. I learned you need to bundle up for that, it’s higher up and it stays cold. Turns out, it was a little chilly.”
The next day’s stop in Skagway provided another cultural experience as the town of 920 is home to several gold-rush-era buildings and the steep Chilkoot Trail with its winding mountain views.
“The name Skagway evolved from one of their native language words that basically meant, ‘Ugly, windy city,’ but it was a cute little town,” Burt said. “They were all touristy in their own way because they are cruise ports but it had an actual functional rail line that took supplies up to the Yukon Territory. That was pretty amazing with the views.”
Fans of Jack London will recall Skagway as the setting for the popular novel, “Call of the Wild.”
Day 8 led the group to Sitka, a town of nearly 9,000 historically known as the site where the Alaska Purchase took place on October 18, 1867.
“My only problem with Sitka, my only regret, is that the excursions took up our whole day,” Burt said. “They were amazing, but we didn’t get to see the town and Sitka seemed to be the first town, Juneau is the capital and has more going on in the port, but in Sitka, it’s a functional place. You have the Alaska State Highway Patrol and it’s where Alaska was signed over from Russia to the United States and some other cool places that we would have been able to see. I would have liked to look around to get a real sense to see what people who actually lived there do.”
In Sitka, Burt and his companions visited a bear and raptor rescue center and also enjoyed another whale-watching tour.
“The bear and raptor place was pretty cool,” Burt said. “The Raptors are birds of prey and they try to get them to a point where they can be re-released into the wild. Some can’t due to their injuries, so they keep them on site, and the bears can’t be re-released. That’s a big policy up there because bears that get too comfortable living off dumpster food isn’t good.”
The whale-watching tour was just as exciting and provided several photo opportunities.
“We had three separate humpback whales that were surfacing,” Burt said. “The shots that were my favorite is when you could see the fluke. The first time I got some decent shots but I had a lot of pictures where a whale had been; that was the running joke.”
Several Alaskan brown bears were spotted on the coast and other sea creatures, such as otters and seals, also made their presence known.
The final day at sea led the group along the Outside Passage to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
“Originally, we had another whale watching excursion, but since we already had seen so much we decided to walk around Victoria all day,” Burt said. “They had a festival that day so there were thousands of people at the pier but didn’t seem overcrowded. They had music and fireworks. We just wandered around and hit some shops. We sat out on a little patio and fantastic poutine and local beer. We just relaxed and made a day of hanging around town.”
After 10 days at sea, Burt was happy to be headed back to Columbus with an experience he’ll never forget.