PaulH8

Icy Strait Point (Hoonah), Alaska

Very cool to walk on the beach and see muscle beach (black shells attached to rocks, phrase from Spongebob). The marine life was active, and fishing is $10 for kids and $30 for adults ($10 + $20 day license). Recommend fishing in the morning. People like the zip line and it looked the best on the trip, but for $120 we passed. There is a town 1.5 miles away, but we didn't get to it.

Ketchikan, Alaska

Tourist town. Nice scenery. Highly recommend buying a jacket for $19.99 in this town. In Icy Straights, it is $30, and Juneau they are $40 and the ship sells a not so warm jacket for $30-$60 depending on the day you buy.

Juneau, Alaska

Favorite stop. For the single reason, because we went on a whale watching excursion booked through Cruises Only. We were very lucky and were the only people on the boat, which can have up to 12 plus captain and dockhand. For 2.5 hours we were on the water and saw many whales and sea lions. That was by far the best excursion we ever had anywhere. We saw an adult whale breach - something the captain said he had never seen. Probably by the end of the tour, we saw maybe 30 whales. We also had blue skies, so we were lucky all around. We were nervous about booking through something other than RCI, but these people were there 20 minutes early with a sign and our name printed on it.

Skagway, Alaska

First thing you do is get a $5 pass on the "SMART" bus. Its a short white bus (no pun intended) with SMART written on it. It is an all day pass and will take you from the ship to the town and outside of town. They have 8 stops. Second thing to do is get off at the Gold Miners Cemetery and walk about 1/2 mile down the rock road and keep walking until you get to Reid Falls. Very cool. Then, get back on the bus and go to Gold Miners Tourist trap. Our kids did the dog sledding excursion ($20/per kid) for an hour and we drank home brew beer, and relaxed. They don't actually get to dog sled, but they learn about it, play with the dogs, pet the puppies (4 weeks old when we were there), and watch the dogs pull a sled around a track. Our kids loved it.