From the Inside Flap
Fodor's Alaska POC
All the essentials for a perfect day in portUp-to-date coverage of the most popular ports in the world's top cruising regions, with restaurants, key sights, entertainment, and shops, all easily reached from the pier.
Helpful cruise primer packed with tips and important contact information.
Written and updated by the country's top cruise experts.
Detailed maps.
Compact enough for a purse or pocket.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Geography alone makes Alaska an ideal cruise destination. On a typical seven-day itinerary, you'll visit up to four ports of call and one or two scenic bays or fjords. And the nature of ship travel is perfectly suited to discovering what Alaska is all about.
The natural beauty of Alaska is hard to overstate. As you prepare for your cruise, consider these facts about Alaska's grandeur: The Inside Passage, the traditional route north to Alaska and a favorite among cruise passengers, stretches 1,000 miles from Puget Sound, Washington, in the south to Skagway, Alaska, in the north. From there, the Gulf of Alaska arcs for another 500 miles from east to west.
Alaska has thousands of glaciers. Among the most famous ones that cruise passengers visit are LeConte outside Petersburg,
the southernmost calving glacier in North America, and Hubbard at Yakutat Bay in the Gulf of Alaska, 6 miles wide and 76 miles long to its source. The Malaspina Glacier, at the entrance to Yakutat Bay, is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
Tongass National Forest, which spans great stretches of the Inside Passage, is the largest national forest in the United States. Wrangell St. Elias National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site east of Anchorage and bordering the Gulf of Alaska, is the largest national park in the United States -- six times the size of Yellowstone.
