Un-Cruise Land Tour + Cruise June 2015 Report

We planned this trip last September after my mother mentioned that she'd always wanted to go to Alaska. It was the only state she had not been to yet. The trip included six of us--me & my husband, our 8yo son, my brother, my mom, and her friend.

We traveled with Un-Cruise on the Wilderness Adventurer--a 60-passenger expedition-style ship--on a cruise from Sitka to Juneau. (We did their "Northern Passages & Glacier Bay" itinerary, which we chose because everything I'd read raved about Glacier Bay.) Their trips don't stop at big ports, but instead anchor in various bays and inlets where we could hike, kayak, paddleboard, and even snorkel each day.

We also added on a land package to Denali at the beginning of the trip, so that's where I'll start with this report.

We flew in to Fairbanks on the first day, which is where the six of us joined up. We all live in different cities. (We thought we were meeting up in the Seattle airport where we all had layovers, but once we got there we discovered we were on two different flights that were supposed to leave at nearly the same time, except that ours got delayed two hours...bummer.) So when we landed in Fairbanks, it was just after midnight local time, and not even close to dark.

Un-Cruise met us and shuttled us to a hotel on the banks of the Chena River, which was lovely but we were hardly there at all, since we had to be up for a 7am departure to catch a train.

They took us by bus to where we caught the glass-domed train that would take us to Denali.

Loved it! There was a bar up on the top deck and a dining car below. They took us in groups to the tables in the dining car, since there were only enough to seat about half the total people at one time. The food was really good.

Off the back of the train was an open-air deck. It was pretty windy out there.

Then we got to the entrance to Denali National Park, where we got off the train and were to catch a bus to the Kantishna Roadhouse, all the way at the end of the 93-mile road into the park. The catch with the bus is that they can seat about 40 people on it, and they have to get the luggage for those 40 people on that same bus. They'd warned us ahead of time that we were limited to soft-sided luggage only, under 35lbs. (And for those of us traveling with Un-Cruise, they'd sent our extra luggage beyond that to Anchorage, to meet up with us at the end of the land portion.) You could easily see why as soon as you saw the space they had at the back of the bus to pile the luggage! But they managed to fit it all, even though not everyone got the memo about the soft-sided luggage. (At least one woman had two large hard-sided suitcases and was very loudly unhappy that she could not bring them both.)

The bus left the entrance at 1pm and was scheduled to arrive at Kantishna by 7:30, so they could get us unloaded and settled into our cabins before dinner was served at 8pm. The lodge is, of course, the only thing up there (well--there are a couple of lodges, but no restaurants or anything) so all your meals are in the lodge's dining hall at scheduled times.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because the drive through the park is one of the best parts.

The first animals we spotted were these mountain goats, way, way, way up on a hill.

Some caribou!

This is what it looked like inside the bus when we'd stop for a wildlife sighting.

The road ahead...

More scenery from the drive through the park...

Time to clean the windows--AGAIN.

Moose!

My brother at one of the rest stops. These moose antlers are serious--they were really heavy.

So then we arrived at Kantishna and were lead to our cabins.

It was a beautiful area, and still super light even at bedtime.

The lodge offers several guided hikes each morning. They described these to us at dinner, and then you could sign up for whichever you wanted to do. They also have a shuttle you can take back over to Wonder Lake (about 5 miles away). You can hike on your own or borrow their bikes and go for a ride, too.

They also have rain gear that guests can borrow for free. Even in kids' sizes! What they did not have in kid sizes were waders. Three of our group (my brother, husband, and 8yo) went on a hike that started with a river crossing, so they all had to wear waders. But the smallest waders they had were still huge on my kid, so in the end, my husband carried him on his back across the river, which worked out fine. (This photo shows my brother in waders before they started off.)

In the afternoon, the day-trippers arrive. They come on the bus, have a sack lunch at the lodge, and then leave again to go all the way back the same afternoon. That seems like a *really* long day. I thought Kantishna was awesome--two nights there wasn't long enough, IMO. If you can stay longer, do it.

They have a couple of afternoon activities, one of which was a talk by the son of a 4-time Iditarod winner who is also a musher himself. He talked about mushing and then we went outside for a demo of the sled dogs pulling a tractor.

Then by 3 the day-trippers leave (immediately after the sled dog demonstration, in this case) and it quiets down again.

Wonder Lake with no view of the mountain.

Since we had three days in the park, I thought we had a pretty good chance of seeing the mountain, but it was not to be. We had even planned a flightseeing trip to fly up over it, but even though we had four chances to fly (morning, afternoon, evening, and the next morning), the weather wasn't good enough any of the times to go up. (Next time, I guess!)

There's a massage therapist at the lodge, so I had a massage in the afternoon before dinner. Dinner was at 6, then there was another talk but I skipped this one. Those who were staying got to sign up for the hike of their choice the next morning; but we got instructions on how early to come to breakfast (5am!) before we left on a bus at 6.

Thanks for your reports so far. Love the pictures. can't wait to hear about your Un Cruise as we're sailing with them next year.

Can't wait for more! Love the pics!

The next morning, our bus came at 6 to drive us back out of the park. It had snowed overnight at the higher elevations (and a bit at Kantishna, too, although just a dusting there).

Not too long into the drive, we encountered a 4yo bear in the road. He wandered along the road and over to the side of the road for about 15 or 20 minutes before he finally meandered off into the brush.

We also stopped for a bunch of mountain goats at the side of the road.

Kantishna sounds great! One more thing to put on my list for next time, and I haven't even been there the first time yet. Thanks for doing a review.

The bus took us back to the entrance to Denali, where we had a short time to hang out (an hour or so) before it was time to catch the glass-dome train again, this time toward Anchorage.

This train ride was much longer than the Fairbanks to Denali ride. That one was about four hours; Denali to Anchorage was around seven hours. We had both lunch and dinner in the dining car, again they took us in groups so they could cycle everyone through.

We arrived in Anchorage around 7:30pm and said goodbye to the friends we'd made in the group. Among the Un-Cruise group, only a couple other people were on our same cruise, others were departing out of Juneau on a different ship. Un-Cruise shuttled us to our hotel. My mom and her friend went to sleep; my brother, husband, son, and I walked down to a bar/restaurant for drinks/snacks before we turned in for the night.

The next morning (a Saturday), we were once again up early to be shuttled to the Anchorage airport. We flew to Sitka through Juneau. The Juneau-Sitka leg was very, very short. I think it only took about 25 minutes total.

In Sitka, we were taken to the hotel that Un-Cruise uses as their home base, where we checked in our luggage (and we even left our carry-on stuff, as there is a person sitting at the check-in area who is there the whole afternoon, so she told us it was safe to leave things with her b/c they would not be unattended). We then had a few hours in Sitka before it was time to board the ship.

My mom has some mobility issues and gets tired really quickly, so we did not try to do much in Sitka. We walked around to a few shops, ate lunch, and then hung out in the hotel lobby to wait for it to be boarding time. Sitka was a very cute town and I heard later about all sorts of cool things to do there that we missed. (Next time!)

How men in Alaska keep warm.

And then it was time to board! A shuttle picked us up from the hotel lobby and drove us the (very short) distance to the dock where our boat was waiting. We had also seen the National Geographic Sea Bird docked in Sitka that day, and they sailed out right around the same time we did.

One thing I was surprised by was that we boarded onto the top deck of the ship. (Low tide? It's always this way? Don't know.) The staff took our photos as we boarded, which they then used to make a "cheat sheet" that showed everyone's picture and name. We also had name tags to wear. There are only 60 passengers max, and you'll be spending every day together for a week, so you get to know your fellow travelers fairly well.

The name tag board--crew on the left, passengers on the right. There was also a whiteboard where they posted info.

Next up--we set sail out of Sitka! And then it gets even harder for me to narrow down the photos to show.

And thanks for the comments so far...it is nice to know people are reading. :)

Thank you so much for doing this review- there hasn't been much info about UnCruise and I'm hoping to do one in the next few years. I'm enjoying it so much I've also pulled up your antarctica one to read too!!!

I didn't find a lot online about Un-Cruise either before our trip so that's partly why I wanted to post a fairly detailed review. I fear it may already be getting too long! It's hard to choose what to include and what to leave out.

So we are now on board the ship. They had our luggage already in our rooms, which, by the way, were SMALL. I'll post a couple pics later. Small. Luckily we didn't need to spend much time in there, and as a plus the windows were large and they opened, which was awesome for napping--breeze and the sound of the water right outside.

Let me tell you here that everyone kept telling us it would be rainy. We had rain jackets and some of our group had bought rain pants ahead of time; I purchased rain pants for me, my husband, and son on the ship. (Spoiler alert...) The entire week we had AMAZING weather and never needed the rain gear. They let me return the unused rain pants at the end of the week. The guides kept saying how unusual it was to have so much sunny, dry weather. (In fact, the term they used for it was "cloud failure." LOL!) We had overcast skies one day + one morning. Not bad, Alaska.

So anyway, they welcomed us with cocktails, then had a muster drill, we practiced putting on life jackets, etc. etc. Then we went out on deck to hang out as we sailed out of Sitka.

There were seven kids on our trip--my son was the youngest. Then there were three other families traveling with teenaged kids (six total teenagers). All boys.

Day 2 of the cruise--Olga Strait

Our cruise did not travel particularly far at any point. We sailed to interesting/pretty spots, anchored, and then had various activities to choose from.

The first morning on the ship we didn't have any activities. Instead we started with a couple of orientations for how things worked--hiking, riding in the zodiacs (skiffs), signing out (with a magnet board that I'll show you later), kayaking, paddleboarding. If you wanted to rent waterproof boots, this was also when you tried those on. (Some people brought their own; we rented.) They assigned everyone a PFD for the kayaking and paddleboarding. Each cabin had a locker on the deck near where we boarded the skiffs where we could store our life vests.

After lunch, we had our first activities. How they worked these is that Sarah, our expedition leader, would explain (each night at dinner usually, although this first day it was in the morning) what the choices were, and then each person would tell her what they wanted to do. Then she would put up a schedule for times & groups. So, if 15 people wanted to do a guided kayak, they'd be broken down into two groups that left at different times. The schedules were posted on the board at some point so you'd know when to be ready.

The first afternoon our options were guided kayaking or a skiff tour. They had an "Intro to Kayaking" for people who were new to it. My husband and I choose kayaking. My son wanted to do the skiff tour, so my brother went with him. (And the Un-Cruise guides were awesome about this, because my brother wanted to do the kayaking, and he got scheduled on a later kayak trip, so he was able to go on the skiff cruise with my son so that he didn't have to go by himself, and he was still back in time for his own kayaking trip. We found the whole Un-Cruise team very accommodating for stuff like this--they arranged skiff tours a couple times that they hadn't planned them just so my mom would be able to go, because often the other activities were too much for her.)

The first skiff tour heads out. They had this one zodiac that had seat cushions and the railing in back to hold onto, which was nice. Most of them you just sit on the inflatable edge, but they used this one with the rail for the scenic cruises (as opposed to ones just used to get us to/from shore).

And then we headed out in kayaks. The guides used single kayaks, but guests had to go in doubles. They were good about finding someone to pair you with if you needed.

My husband finally makes an appearance in these photos.

We pulled up into little coves along rocky cliffs and found all sorts of sea life. The guide picked up a few things and we passed them around (very carefully). This was one of many sunflower seastars we encountered--they're huge!

This was the E-Z load dock. And it really was easy! Easiest I have ever gotten into and out of a kayak, by far. You get in on the deck, then the crew just pushes you off into the water. And when you come back in, they pull you up onto the deck like you see here. Very stable.

After dinner that night we hung out in the hot tub up on the top deck during sunset.

One of the ferries in the Alaska ferry system.

Three more from that night...it was so late and yet the light was so beautiful. These were taken around 11pm.

Thanks for doing this! Please, don't worry about it being too long or including too many pictures - that is just impossible! Anyone looking at this board wants all the information and pictures you can provide!

I'm enjoying your report! These small ships look like a lot of fun.

Day 3 of cruise--Ushk Bay

The next day we were anchored in Ushk Bay, a peaceful bay where we were away from boat traffic and there was nowhere to get lost. So they offered open paddleboarding and open kayaking, where you could take out either and go for as long or as little as you liked without a guide.

The other options were a skiff cruise or a shore walk. My mom, her friend, and my brother did the skiff cruise and got the first whale sightings of the trip.

My husband and son kayaked, and I paddleboarded.

Me on a paddleboard. Look at this amazing weather we had--sunny, blue skies, and warm enough to go sleeveless! Lots of people were in shorts. Total cloud failure.

I paddled over next to the ship to wave hi to my mom who was on deck waiting for her skiff cruise to be called. Plus that gave her a chance to get a couple of photos of me, but I haven't seen those yet.

My husband & son in their kayak, with the Wilderness Adventurer behind them in the distance.

Sea kelp. I took this picture by putting the (waterproof) camera half in the water and half out. Part of this is underwater, the the other half is the reflection on the top of the water.

While I was paddling, I heard Sarah (expedition leader) announce over the PA system that they were going to open up swimming if anyone wanted to. She called it "open swim" but it wasn't really like you could swim anywhere you wanted. You could jump in (with life vest) and then swim around to the side of the ship and climb out.

Once we were back on the boat, my husband decided to do the swim. Here he is jumping in off the EZ load dock. The water was cold but not frigid here. I kind of wanted to swim but it seemed like a lot of effort to go change to my swimsuit and then have to change again after, all just for a couple minutes in the water, so I didn't bother.

There were jellyfish in the water, although not a ton of them, so there probably wasn't much danger of getting stung in a couple minutes in the water. I kept trying to photograph them as I paddleboarded by, but they'd always swim away from me.

And here's the magnet board that we used to keep track of who was where. This was on the deck next to the loading dock, so as you went down to get on a kayak, paddleboard, or skiff, you moved one of the magnets for your cabin number over to the "Ashore" side, and then you moved it back again as you came back on.

Next up...lunch, followed by bushwhacking.

For our afternoon activities, we had choices of a couple different hikes--a shore walk and a bushwhack are the two I know because those are what those in our group did. I can't remember if there were other options or not. They did not have the open kayaking/paddleboarding going in the afternoon.

My mom and her friend did a shore walk. The rest of us signed up for the bushwhack, although when it was time to go, my son changed his mind and decided to stay on the ship and play games. (There were a lot of board games in the lounge, and everyone on this trip was super friendly and several were willing to play board games with him. He was especially fond of beating people at Battleship.)

Zodiac ride to get to shore. The spot where we were going was a little peninsula. The zodiac dropped us off on one side and then planned to meet us on the other side in two hours. The peninsula was basically lightbulb shaped (if you imagine viewing it from above looking down), so there was really no way to get lost. There were no trails.

Our guide started out leading us, but at various points different people took over leading the way and trying to suss out the best path.

This plant with the giant leaves is called devil's club. Its stems are covered in tiny sharp spines. We had to be very careful not to grab hold of this as we moved through. One of the guides had gotten some of the spines in her hand the week before and still had a few in there she'd been unable to pull out. OUCH. Devil's club was all over the place in these woods.

Going under fallen trees.

Banana slug! Apparently called this because they're often yellow. I don't know why this one was brown. Rotten? (Haha.) We saw several of these.

More from the bushwhacking...

This was on the other side, where we came out of the woods to the beach where the zodiac was picking us up.

We wore waterproof boots because it was a wet landing--we had to step into the water to get in and out of the zodiac. The forest was pretty wet and muddy, too, so they were a pretty good choice for the hike as well.

Every afternoon on the ship they had a happy hour with appetizers. Usually they were inside in the lounge next to the bar, but this day the weather was so nice they set the apps out on the sun deck on top.

Then came dinner. And then came a whole lot of humpback whales!

Your pictures are amazing!! The scenery is beautiful and your pics looks so professional! Can't wait for our trip coming up in a few weeks! Thanks for the review

Yes, those are great images....

Looking at one of the image's meta data... I see you are using the Nikon 1 AW1.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anMDaViILxw
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp2hXXkUpsQ
  

@boulder-girl: How do you like that camera?

Yes, those are great images....

 

Looking at one of the image's meta data... I see you are using the Nikon 1 AW1.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anMDaViILxw
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp2hXXkUpsQ
  

@boulder-girl: How do you like that camera?

Yes...I used the AW1, which is waterproof, for all the images taken from my kayak or paddleboard. I love it! The image quality is fantastic. I chose this particular model because it can shoot RAW (instead of jpgs), which lets me keep control of the processing in Lightroom, which was a priority for me. It's pretty fast to focus and pretty accurate with exposure in auto mode.

After dinner, someone spotted whales, and we all ran out on the decks to see. For a couple of hours, several humpback whales played all around our ship. It was awesome. The captain stopped the ship so we could hang out with them.

Un-Cruise provided binoculars in each stateroom that we could use for the duration of the trip.

No whales in this one...just pretty light.

More whale pics...

Eventually it was late enough that I went down to tuck in my 8yo, but then we heard more whale blow outside the window. So we watched them from his room for a while before he went to sleep.

Back up on deck now...

They were REALLY close to the boat. The photo above is taken at 35mm, not a long zoom. So awesome!

And then one to show you the lockers on the deck where we kept our life vests stored. The yellow things you see hanging are the spray-skirts for the kayaks. The roped-off staircase there is the one that goes down to the loading deck.