Photos: Alaska Land Tour
Photos: Alaska Cruise

Monday morning we disembarked the ship at 9AM at Whittier, AK, and got onto a packed bus headed to Anchorage. The drive was about 2 hours, starting off with a drive through a tunnel with a one-lane road. I think it was 2.5 miles long? And yeah, only one car allowed through at a time. We had to wait a bit until it was our turn. And that’s the only way out of Whittier by road. Quaint…or something.

On the way to Anchorage, we stopped off at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which houses animals that can no longer survive in the wild. Such as injured moose, bear, and a bald eagle with only one wing (the other was shot off by a hunter).

After that, we ended up driving through Anchorage to get to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, which had some cool exhibits set up, including recreations of various native Alaskan villages and living quarters. It was neat to hear how ingenious the natives were, especially when it came to downright scary things, like hunting polar bears.

And yeah, that was the first place I ate reindeer (which are the same as caribou, just domesticated – a fact I heard many times throughout the land tour).

On our way back to Anchorage, there was a moose just hanging out on the side of the road. Surreal.

Then it was on to the Captain Cook Hotel, where I was stoked to find out that I had a real bed. No more of that pull-out sofa bed that I had on the ship. And damn, was it comfortable. We all took naps, and then headed out to the Brewhouse down the block for dinner.

We had 18.5 hours of daylight that day. And wait’ll you hear about the next day…