Great Alaska Explorer

Pressed between the Pacific and the Coast Mountains, Vancouver is the natural gateway to Alaska's Inside Passage — a city where temperate rainforest meets glass towers and where Dungeness crab and wild sockeye salmon define a Pacific Rim cuisine that rivals any in North America. Walk the 22-kilometre Stanley Park seawall, lose yourself in the Granville Island market, then ferry across to Victoria's Edwardian splendour. Alaska cruise season peaks from May through September, making Vancouver an ideal starting point for one of the world's great ocean journeys.

Kodiak, Alaska's oldest European settlement and one of America's largest fishing ports, sits on an island home to 3,500 giant Kodiak brown bears—the densest concentration on Earth. Must-dos include floatplane bear-viewing at remote salmon streams, the Alutiiq Museum of indigenous culture, and sampling king crab fresh from the harbor. July and August offer the warmest weather and peak bear-viewing season.

Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, sits dramatically between the Chugach Mountains and Cook Inlet, serving as the gateway to Denali, Kenai Fjords, and the Inside Passage. Must-dos include the Anchorage Museum's Alaska Native collections, the Seward Highway's fjord-like scenery, and sampling king crab and wild-caught salmon. Mid-May through mid-September offers the best conditions, with June and July bringing twenty hours of daylight.

Valdez sits at the head of a fjord in Prince William Sound, surrounded by the Chugach Mountains and tidewater glaciers that make it one of Alaska's most scenically dramatic ports. Must-do experiences include cruising to the Columbia Glacier, walking up to the Worthington Glacier, and tasting fresh-caught halibut at harbour-front restaurants. May through September is the season, with July-August bringing salmon runs and the warmest weather.

Glacier Bay National Park is one of the most profound landscapes of active glaciation on Earth — 3.3 million acres of southeastern Alaska where tidewater glaciers calve cathedral-sized icebergs into fjords of luminous blue water, and where the land itself is still rising, liberated from the weight of ice that buried this entire region just two centuries ago. The park, reachable only by ship or small aircraft, rewards visitors with wildlife encounters — humpback whales, brown bears, sea otters, and mountain goats — set against scenery of almost overwhelming grandeur. The season runs May through September; late June and July offer the longest days and most reliable wildlife activity.

America's only state capital unreachable by road, Juneau rewards the journey with a wilderness grandeur that few cities on earth can match. The Mendenhall Glacier — a living river of ancient ice — lies just fifteen minutes from downtown, where floatplanes dart above a waterfront flanked by spruce-draped mountains plunging straight into the sea. The must-do experience is a helicopter landing atop the icefield or a whale-watching excursion in Stephens Passage, where humpbacks breach in astonishing proximity. Juneau is warmest from June to August, though even summer days can bring the famous Southeast Alaska rain that keeps the rainforest perpetually luminous.

Wrangell is one of Alaska's most authentic Inside Passage ports, where Tlingit heritage, ancient petroglyphs, and world-class wildlife converge at the mouth of the mighty Stikine River. Essential experiences include jet boating to LeConte Glacier, watching bears fish at Anan Creek, and tasting locally smoked salmon. July and August offer peak salmon runs and bear viewing.

Ketchikan clings to the forested shore of Revillagigedo Island in Alaska's southeastern panhandle — a town so narrow that locals joke it is three miles long and three blocks wide. Revered by the Tlingit people for millennia as a place of abundant salmon, it is today celebrated as the Totem Pole Capital of the World: the collections at Saxman Native Village and Totem Bight State Historical Park preserve the most significant concentration of these monumental artworks anywhere. Creek Street, a boardwalk of colorful historic houses built over Ketchikan Creek, should not be missed. Summer (May–September) brings the best weather, with salmon running in the creeks below.

Prince Rupert, a historic railway terminus on British Columbia's northern coast, enchants visitors with its deep Tsimshian heritage, world-class halibut fishing, and misty rain forest scenery along the Inside Passage. Sample freshly smoked salmon at the waterfront and explore the North Pacific Cannery, Canada's oldest surviving cannery, for a vivid encounter with the port's maritime soul. The best time to visit is June through August, when longer days temper the famous rainfall and wildlife activity peaks along the coast.

Pressed between the Pacific and the Coast Mountains, Vancouver is the natural gateway to Alaska's Inside Passage — a city where temperate rainforest meets glass towers and where Dungeness crab and wild sockeye salmon define a Pacific Rim cuisine that rivals any in North America. Walk the 22-kilometre Stanley Park seawall, lose yourself in the Granville Island market, then ferry across to Victoria's Edwardian splendour. Alaska cruise season peaks from May through September, making Vancouver an ideal starting point for one of the world's great ocean journeys.