An Alaska cruise lives or dies by what you do ashore, and Cruise Passenger's editor-in-chief Peter Lynch has just come back from a Grand Princess voyage and Princess cruisetour with a shortlist of experiences worth planning a trip around.
In Ketchikan, his top pick was a catch-and-cook outing with Baranof Fishing Excursions. Geared up with waterproofs and rods, guests fish the forested islands around town before the catch is cooked over coals at a wilderness campsite — in his case, a curry sauce with a damper roll eaten round a log fire. A Dungeness crab feast nearby on George Inlet offers a similar reward: help haul a crab pot, learn how Alaska's size rules protect the fishery, then crack your way through an all-you-can-eat spread at a former cannery bunkhouse.
In Skagway, the White Pass Scenic Railway is an easy win. The narrow-gauge line, blasted into the mountains during the Klondike Gold Rush, climbs nearly 3,000 feet over a 40-mile return trip past waterfalls, trestles and gorges — and trains load close to the cruise berths, so there's minimal legwork for maximum scenery.
Inland, the cruisetour leg delivered some of the trip's best moments. Denali's Tundra Wilderness Tour runs about five and a half hours to around Mile 43, with driver-guides whose sharp eyes — and onboard video screens showing close-ups of a brown bear — make distant wildlife feel near. In Fairbanks, the Binkley family's Riverboat Discovery sternwheeler packs a sled-dog demo tied to Iditarod champion Susan Butcher's kennel, reindeer, and a living-history stop at Chena Village into three polished hours on the Chena River. Near Talkeetna, a glass-domed jet boat speeds 20 miles up the Susitna River with views towards Denali, balanced by a naturalist-led forest walk and a reconstructed Dena'ina encampment. For something more physical, a 2.5-hour ATV adventure on Yamaha side-by-sides near Denali mixes rocky trails and creek beds with big views over Otto Lake and the Healy Valley.
Juneau brought the wildlife day: a four-hour whale-watching trip from Auke Bay produced six whales, plus sea lions, with boats sharing sightings so nobody misses out.
The cheapest thrills, though, came free. Scenic cruising days in Yakutat Bay for the advancing Hubbard Glacier — North America's longest tidewater glacier — and a full day in Glacier Bay with National Park Service rangers narrating from the decks were included in the fare. Lynch's advice: move around the ship, bring binoculars and rug up against the wind.
For anyone booking an Alaska cruise, the takeaway is that excursions are where the trip is made — from roughly US$100 crab feasts to full-day park tours — and that pairing a cruise with a land tour opens up Denali and the Interior. Bookable through Princess or operators directly, the best experiences sell out well before the short May-to-September season.
