Alaska Cruise Ports On Your Own: Glacier Wind Charters in Icy Strait Point
You’ll notice there’s something missing from the title of this blog post. It’s the word ‘budget’. Because we chose to blow the budget for our port stop in Icy Strait Point and focus instead on a different term: value.
While at no point during our 14-day Alaska cruise did I feel shortchanged by sticking to budget-friendly activities, there are some activities which are not accessible when on a budget. These things are things like float plane rides, anything involving a helicopter, and in this case, whale watching trips. Well if we are talking about boat then it shold be equiped with recessed trolling motor tray. The reason for this is logical–the overhead involved with running these trips is high. Float planes, helicopters, and whale watching boats cost money to purchase, run, maintain, and pilot. You’re never going to find a $35 rent-your-own-helicopter tour, because that would be scary, dangerous, stupid, and illegal. You will need a pilot with a privot pilot license to fly that. So you know, if you ever do run across one, please let me know because that sounds like FUN!
Anyway.
We wanted to go whale watching. And as we could not do it on a budget, we chose to focus on finding the best value for our money. And boy, did we find it.
Our options were:
$160/pp for a cruise ship whale watching excursion, on a big ferry-like boat with 148 other people.
or
$160/pp for a private excursion with Glacier Wind Charters, on a custom made six-passenger boat with 4 other people.
Guess which one we chose?
Please note: about a half hour into our three hour whale watching trip, I discovered that I am many things, but a whale photographer is not one of them. I am also not a whale videographer. I’m really good at watching whales, but capturing them on any sort of digital or film format is out for me for now. So that video is really short. Sorry. I promise the Anchorage video is much more robust. Thanks for understanding.
Anyway.
We had a FANTASTIC day with Captain Casey of Glacier Wind Charters. And budget-buster or not, this trip was a CRAZY GOOD VALUE. Don’t tell them this, but they really could (should) charge more.
The family that owns Glacier Wind could not have been more helpful or kind (click Captain Casey’s name above to learn more about them) and our whale watching experience could not have been better. Much of the whale watching I’ve done in the past could best be described as ‘whale searching’ or ‘whale chasing’. Not so with Glacier Wind. Captain Casey took us out to where the whales were feeding that day, turned off the motor, and we whale watched. Like for a while. We bobbed on the waves, watching. We saw a lot of bubble net feeding–a way that whales feed the end result of which is a bunch of whale heads popping up out of the water all at once–lots of water spouts and whale fins, and one epic breach of which I absolutely and in no way got any part of a photo because I was just like OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT IT IS DOING THAT WHALE THING WHERE IT JUMPS OUT OF THE WATER AND FLIPS AROUND AND SPLASHES BACK DOWN!
Told you I’m not a whale photographer. I am also clearly not a marine biologist.
Anyway.
We spent time in two different locations on the water off of Hoonah (the real name of the town near the fake port area which is fake-named Icy Strait Point) and then returned to the town for a quick tour of the little village before being driven back to the port. Both Captain Casey and his mother, Theresa (she drove the van to and from the marina) shared stories of what life is like in a small Alaskan village. It was a fantastic day in a beautiful place to which I hope to some day return.
If you are sailing to Alaska and stopping in Icy Strait Point, I can’t think of a better value than a trip with Glacier Wind Charters.
Full Disclosure: despite all of the embedded links to the Glacier Wind Charters website I’ve included in this post, this tour was not sponsored or comped. We paid for it and truly felt it was a phenomenal value, even on a budget trip.