Each year, about 2 million people visit Alaska, with about half arriving on cruise ships. While tour operators don’t offer tours for seniors labeled as such, older visitors can find activities including educational and cultural focused itineraries, soft adventure and luxury cruises. Be sure to ask your travel agent for any senior or AARP discounts when booking tours to Alaska and about whether doctors are staffed on board cruise ships.
Formerly known as Elderhostel, Exploritas offers more than two dozen trips to Alaska, many off the beaten path. “Studying America’s Arctic: A Land of Awesome Grace” takes guests to the University of Alaska Fairbank’s International Arctic Research Center, where visitors can study caribou, reindeer and musk ox. The trip continues to the oilfields at Prudhoe Bay and continues to meet tundra researchers and hunters and trappers. Another trip, “Intergenerational: Mammoth Hunting Under the Midnight Sun in Alaska,” invites grandparents and their grandchildren to visit the traditional Inupiat town of Kotzebue for the summer solstice, as well as fossil hunting and a visit to a fish camp.
Exploritas/Elderhostel ?
11 Avenue de Lafayette ?
Boston MA 02111 ?
800-454-5768 ?
exploritas.org
Senior birders in search of the red-legged kittiwake, the horned puffin, eiders or rare Asiatic birds blown off course during their migrations can take Wilderness Birding Adventures’ trip to the Galapagos of the North, the Pribilof Islands north of the Aleutian Chain. The four-day trip offers many hours of uninterrupted birding as well as a chance to experience the Aleut culture of the village of St. Paul. The firm also sponsors trips to Adak, Gambell, Nome, Barrow, the Kenai Peninsula and the Arctic Refuge Solstice Base Camp.
Wilderness Birding Adventures
5515 Wild Mountain Road
Eagle River, AK 99577
907-694-7442
wildernessbirding.com
After 60 years of pioneering tours in the Last Frontier, CruiseWest continues to focus on a small-ship approach to seeing the sites of Southeastern Alaska’s Inside Passage, with vessels that carry no more than 138 guests and can get so close to waterfalls that passengers feel their mist. CruiseWest’s Gold Rush Inside Passage tour takes 10 nights to sail from Seattle to Juneau, following the route of the original stampeders in the Klondike Gold Rush. Passengers visit Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and he towns of Sitka, Petersburg and Skagway. An optional land tour adds three nights in Denali National Park.
CruiseWest
2301 Fifth Ave., Suite 401
Seattle, WA 98121
888-851-8133
cruisewest.com
Lindblad Expeditions takes naturalists, historians and a wellness expert aboard the National Geographic Sea Lion. This expedition ship, with 31 outside cabins for 62 guests, explores Alaska’s Inside Passage on an eight-day trip from Juneau to Sitka. Seniors can stretch their legs on shore walks to waterfalls, with bird-watching and identifying wildflowers on the way. The Sea Lion spends a full day at Glacier Bay National Park.
Lindblad Expeditions
96 Morton St.
9th Floor
New York, NY 10014
800-EXPEDITION
212-765-7740
expeditions.com
