Icy Strait Point/ Hoonah ideas.

We are sailing southbound Alaska is a month and I have some ideas for all ports except for Icy Strait Point/ Hoonah.

I read here that ISP is an excellent location for Whale watching, but we did it a year ago in Argentina, and ISP prices are pretty high for an "ok, let's do it again", so I was looking for alternatives.

We love hiking, but I didn't see any hiking trail except a short road between the pier and the town.

Bear "searching" ? It looks like spending all the time in the van rather than walking.

So you have gone whale watching before. Me, too. But last month we did it again in Icy Strait. It was so much better than our time in Juneau, and our time in Juneau was pretty good.

Check out Glacier Wind charters. Small boat, max of 6 people per tour, and the best customer service you can ever imagine. I highly recommend them.

I don't think you will be disappointed!

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2376089&page=10 post 188 starts what we did Icy strait point day. We did two different excirsions there. Plus you can also see the zip rider they have.

plenty of options in icy strait not doing whale watching.

Here's a list of local vendors: http://visithoonah.com/tours_charters.html

Since we had excursions booked in all of our other ports, Spousal Unit and I treated our Icy Strait stop as a casual day of wandering. We went through the cannery museum, walked the 1 1/2 mile oceanside trail into Hoonah, looked in on the Huna Tribal House Carving Project, and had some beers at Icy Strait Brewing on the way back. There is a short nature trail at the port area, but we passed on it because we had done enough hiking in Skagway the day before.

ISP (Hoonah) would not have been a favorite stop if we didn't have an excursion booked. We did an ATV tour, which was a blast, and we got to see a brown bear that ran in front of our vehicles for quite a while. Afterwards, we saw the cultural show, which was a little corny, but our group had fun with the audience participation. Before we returned to the ship, we watched a lone humpback showing off in the distance. I would highly recommend doing some sort of excursion at this port or maybe just having a relaxing spa day on ship.

Check out Misty Bay for a whale watch tour. I don't think you will regret doing it again. I think we would have been bored with ISP(Hoonah) if we didn't do this tour.

Thanks.

I was looking more for a good hike or something like that.

Now I have to decide between just wandering / getting beer at Icy Strait brewery and a whale watch (I know, I have not much time: F.I.S.H.E.S , g-wind and Tecck are filling their boats pretty fast).

It's expensive, we just did it, but it's really gorgeous.

Book as soon as you can. All the popular things were filled up when we got there. It was the only port where I had not made advance reservations. :(