A Couple of Ways to See Alaska From Sea Level

Alaska is where a cheery waitress in a long gingham dress and apron calls you “honey” as she delivers your “mini-breakfast” of fried eggs, thick-sliced bacon and a Frisbee-size sourdough pancake.

It’s where Juneau locals flirt with danger in their favorite winter sport of ice-climbing, clambering vertically up frozen waterfalls.

And it’s where the sight of a bald eagle swooping in with arched wings and curled talons to land atop a scraggly conifer can make your heart pound for one glorious moment.

Some of the most beautiful scenery in Alaska lies along the sheltered waterways of the Inside Passage, traversed in summer by many cruise ships that glide between the lushly wooded islands.

They call at Juneau, where passengers head dutifully for Mendenhall Glacier while the crew sets off for a beer at the loud and crowded Red Dog Saloon.

And at Ketchikan, where a bordello called Dolly’s that flourished until the 1950s has been turned into a popular museum.

They call in Skagway, where the restored rail cars of the historic White Pass & Yukon Railway, a narrow-gauge line that once carried hopeful prospectors toward the Klondike, are rolling once again.

And in Sitka, where the ghosts of con man Soapy Smith, Ethel the Moose and Mollie Fewclothes still swing through squeaking saloon doors and clump along the wooden sidewalks, and the onion-domed shadows of the old Russian church fall on the streets.

They call in Glacier Bay, the crowning glory of the Alaskan panhandle, where black-winged kittiwakes fill the air with shrill cries, cormorants dive for fish and, in easy camera range just off the ship’s rail, a mother seal and her pup drift by on an ice floe.

There 15 active glaciers reach down to the sea like great frozen rivers, giving birth to icebergs by “calving” with the sound of a rifle shot and sending tons of blue ice tumbling into the water. Native Alaskans call the glaciers “children of the snow.”

Most Inside Passage cruises travel seven days round trip from Vancouver, calling at Juneau and Skagway, as well as Ketchikan or Sitka, and usually, but not always, cruising secluded Glacier Bay.

Gulf of Alaska cruises add to the basic Inside Passage ports the scenic Kenai Peninsula, Prince William Sound (cruise ship lanes show virtually no trace of last year’s massive Exxon oil spill) and Whittier or Anchorage, thus opening the vast interior of the state for pre- or post-cruise land options.

Glacier watchers also get a close look at spectacular Columbia Glacier, at 400 square miles as big as sprawling Los Angeles.

By taking two to seven extra days, passengers can add a scenic rail trip in luxurious glass-domed cars to Denali and Fairbanks, flight-seeing hops above the Arctic Circle to Kotzebue, Barrow or Nome, and even an overland tour along the Trans Alaska pipeline to isolated Prudhoe Bay.

Shipboard life in Alaska is fairly casual, depending upon your choice of ship. On small exploration and adventure vessels, dressing for dinner may mean changing into clean shirt and slacks. Larger, more traditional vessels expect men to wear coat and tie and women cocktail dresses or dressy pantsuits for one or two evenings during the week.

The weather is likely to be milder than expected, but unpredictable, alternating between dazzling sunshine, cool drizzle and misty overcast, sometimes all in one day.

Oddly enough, it’s often warmer in summer around Fairbanks and Anchorage than in the moister southeastern panhandle. Unless you go far above the Arctic Circle the temperature will rarely dip below 45 or 50, and in warm spells the thermometer may go higher than 80 degrees or even more than 90. The hours of daylight in summer are long, with the sun rising as early as 5 a.m. and setting after 10 p.m.

Take along a camera with telephoto lens for wildlife shots, as well as a good pair of binoculars to find eagles and watch sea lion families float by on ice floes.

Wear a down vest or jacket on deck or on cool days ashore, along with sturdy walking shoes or hiking boots for excursions to gold mines, ghost towns, glaciers, rain forests and salmon-spawning streams. You can select from a variety of excursions or strike out and explore on your own.

Several new cruise vessels are heading north to Alaska this summer, including the Crystal Harmony, making its maiden voyage from San Francisco July 24; Windstar Sail Cruises’ 148-passenger Wind Spirit; Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s 976-passenger Viking Serenade, formerly Admiral’s Stardancer; Clipper Cruises’ 138-passenger Yorktown Clipper, and Sven-Olof Lindblad’s Special Expeditions’ 70-passenger Sea Bird.

Other cruise lines in Alaska this summer will include Cunard Line, Costa Cruises, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Regency Cruises, Royal Viking Line, Seven Seas Cruises and World Explorer Cruises.