The Alaska and Inside Passage Cruise with Viking

As a working photographer and a lover of active cruises, taking the Viking Alaska and the Inside Passage cruise in early June 2022 was a perfect opportunity to see the dramatic sights and scenes of this remote state. Over this, and the following articles, I’ll review the cruise from Seward to Vancouver and illustrate them with my favorite photos of the trip. I’m aiming these stories both at readers who love Alaska and those who are thinking of taking this cruise and want to know what to expect! Of course, if you have already taken the cruise, you might like the fond memories that these images might prompt!

Incidentally, we cruised with Viking for several years before I realized I was missing out on a discount. You can read more about that discount here.

June 2022 – an unseasonably warm start to the Alaska cruise

The weather had been unseasonably warm in Alaska but there was still snow on the mountains and we were generally lucky (I think) with the weather throughout the cruise. The ship was the Viking Orion, and while this isn’t really a review of this particular Viking cruise, we have been on cruises with them many times now, and I have nothing but praise for the quality of the ships, the experience on and off the boat, the food and the general peaceful and friendly conditions you find everywhere on board. Probably more expensive than other cruises but almost everything is included in the price and there is no “nickel and diming” that is common with other companies. This article is a summary of the cruise and links to all the separate stories I have written to describe and illustrate the voyage. I’ve enjoyed going through my images (and my memories) to put these stories together. I hope you will enjoy reading them, and, if you do, please comment and let me know what you think. You can also add your email to join my contact list and get updated whenever I add new posts to the site. I’m a professional photographer and so my best images are available as prints.

Seward

The cruise started in Seward although we had booked air using Viking and so we were taken by coach from Anchorage to Seward. If you are traveling with your own arrangements, the train from Anchorage pulls into Seward right by the ship, and so that seems to be a very easy way to get to the docks. The first day was registration and getting on board the ship and so our first real outing was the Resurrection Bay Wildlife cruise, which can be found via this link.

Valdez

Day 3 was marked by the arrival in Valdez, which enjoys a breathtaking setting at the head of the fjord in Prince William Sound. We decided to take the Highlights of Valdez tour, which included the old town, the salmon hatchery and then a drive through Keystone Canyon to the Thompson Pass and Richardson Glacier. As a result, we didn’t get to walk around the town itself, although we could probably have fitted it in. The Norwegian pancakes were calling instead! I wrote a separate story about the waterfalls in Keystone Canyon which can be found here.

Hubbard Glacier

Leaving Valdez, we traveled through the night to end up, the following morning at the Hubbard Glacier. There was a real cold wind that came down off the ice and across the bay and, to be honest, it was cloudy and wet as we arrived. The clouds cleared at little, and we were able to see the full majesty of the glacier. Believe it or not, this is more than six miles wide where it meets the ocean and rises to 400 feet or so. The ship stayed around 2 hours in the bay, slowly rotating so that everyone could see the glacier and surrounding mountains before we cruised away for our next stop. The full story of the visit to the Hubbard Glacier can be found here.

That evening actually turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip! Firstly, we managed to get a window table in the Chef’s Table restaurant and watched the mountains glide by as the sun slowly set, and then we were treated to a magnificent sunset seen from the balcony of our cabin. A perfect end to the day that you can read about here.

Skagway

By Monday morning, we had reached the small town of Skagway set in its glacial valley. Skagway was built to support the gold rush that created so much wealth (and destroyed so many lives) in the 1890s as it was one of main ways that miners aiming to try their luck in the Klondike started their journey in Alaska. The narrow-gauge railway was built in 1898 to get people over White Pass and it is now a key sightseeing opportunity in Skagway. However, it was raining when we arrived and so we chose to stroll around the town instead, checking out the historic buildings that still remain. Friends who went on the train ride were pretty impressed though, so perhaps this was a mistake! My story about Skagway can be found at this link.

Icy Strait Point and Hoonah

The reason the sail to Skagway takes so long is that it is way up a fjord and after visiting it, you basically reverse direction and sail back to the ocean to get to Icy Strait Point. So the Tuesday was spent in Icy Strait Point and Hoonah. For some reason, we were able to dock early in the morning and get off the ship, but then the ship went out into the bay and anchored as much larger cruise ships took our place at the dock! But arriving early meant that we could visit the various sights before the crowds descended from the other boats. We did take the shuttle to the small town of Hoonah, thinking it would be some sort of nice Tlinkit community, but it really has very little (OK, make that nothing) to make the journey worthwhile. Some people were walking there to save the cost of the shuttle bus, which must have been disappointing when they arrived. But Icy Strait Point now has two cable car/gondolas as well as a very fast zip line from the top of the mountain to the waterfront. I’ve written two stories about this day – one about the historic pier and salmon canning building, now a museum and shop and one about the cable car gondola ride up the mountain.

We pressed through the crowds leaving the Celebrity Eclipse to get back to the dock and caught the tender boats back to the Orion, thankful for two things – we had a free all-day pass to use the gondolas, and we had a small and friendly ship to go back to!

You will have seen the spectacular sunset that we had after leaving the Hubbard Glacier, and on the evening of the sail from Icy Strait Point (in a very similar part of the coastline), we had another. Not as spectacular, and we were also further from the coast, but who is complaining!

Sitka

The next day was an early arrival in Sitka with its extinct volcano. Sitka is a lovely little town and after a presentation of a historic play/dance by the local community, we walked around the historic town – the site of the original Russian community in Alaska and also the site of the handover of Alaska to the USA following its purchase. There is the National Historical Park here with a collection of many totem poles carved by the local Tlinkit people installed in the forest as well as a Raptor rescue center, both of which are an easy walk from the town. Both well worth a visit and you can see my recollections of the place in this story about Sitka.

Juneau

After Sitka, we sort of reversed direction again and made our way back up the fjords to Juneau, the capital of Alaska. Again, not a large place – nothing in Alaska is – but very interesting. We took the included tour to Mendenhall Glacier and Brotherhood Bridge although as the weather steadily improved as the day went on, I did regret not booking the Photo tour of the glacier and the whale watching. But it was all booked up when I made that decision. You can read my full story of a packed day in Juneau, from the glacier to the mountain top via the Gondola. All in all, a great day in Juneau!

Ketchikan

By now, we were used to relatively cloudy conditions in the early morning with brighter sunny days later on, but our next visit to Ketchikan proved this wrong. We arrived on a very damp day with heavy rain. Luckily, we had packed our rain clothing and so we were able to trudge through the rain to the Potlatch Park and their demonstrations and stories of the Tlinkit people and their totem pole carvings. Interesting, indeed. Then we walked around the town, eventually finding the famous Creek Street houses and shops (and brothel). We thought this might have been on the coast, but it is actually just a little inland along the fast-running creek. I’ve written a story here about using digital painting techniques to bring some life and warmth back into the rather drab scene on Creek Street in the rain.

Ketchikan is rightly famous for being among the wettest places in Alaska and it lived up to that reputation for us. But still, an interesting place!

We were then at sea sailing in the Inside Passage towards Vancouver, and I was a little disappointed. The scenery was nice, but it was all a bit “the same” without as much drama as we had seen before. I do have some photos, but few of them are what I am proud of. The one below is of Campbell River, in Canada looking towards Vancouver Island:

After an overnight sail, we were in Vancouver early the next morning and on our way home. A very long day, but one filled with memories of where we had been. I hope you feel that you have learned something about this area via these articles and you can find all my Alaska prints here in my gallery. Please leave me a comment if you have!

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