Notes from the Co-Founder Who Hugged a Bear

Elizabeth takes over the blog this week.

Hi. It’s Elizabeth - the other half of Untethered Voyages, the one who handles operations, logistics, supplier relationships, and apparently, hugging bears. Wendy usually writes these. This week, she's letting me have the keyboard. Bear with me.

(Pun absolutely intended.)

I want to tell you about the moments I didn't plan for.

Because that's the thing about Alaska that nobody adequately prepares you for - and I say this as someone who spent months helping prepare other people for it. The research, the port guides, the emails, the excursion recommendations. I knew Alaska intellectually.

And then I got there.

What followed was a week of moments I didn't see coming. And those are the ones I keep thinking about.

Valdez: The Day We Pulled Over and Couldn't Stop

We rented a car in Valdez through Turo - if you haven't used it, it's essentially Airbnb for cars, renting directly from locals. Our host went out of their way to make pickup easy, left us detailed notes, and sent us off with genuine warmth. It set the tone for the whole day.

We drove out of town with a loose plan: find waterfalls.

What we found was waterfalls everywhere. Up and down the road, as far as we could see, cascading off the mountains in every direction. We kept pulling over. We couldn't help it. At one stop, we walked a short trail in the light rain - it was early, a little misty, mostly just us - and found ourselves standing in front of three separate waterfalls pouring off the same mountain. Nobody said anything for a while. There wasn't much to say.

And then we found Glacier Lake.

I was not prepared for Glacier Lake.

The blue of the glacier ice floating in the water is a color I'm not sure I can describe accurately. Silt. Grit. Blue. Gray. It's not quite like anything else. We walked right up to the lake - close enough that it felt almost impossible that we were the only ones just... standing there, exploring, with no ticket booth or timed entry or crowd between us and this ancient, extraordinary thing.

And at another stop, a sea lion appeared, swimming upstream against the river current with tremendous determination, clearly trying to get somewhere important. We watched him for longer than made any practical sense. He did not care about us at all. It was perfect. He made it, by the way.

I didn't have any of that on my itinerary. That's the point.

Sitka: The Port That Stopped Me

I wasn't sure what to expect from Sitka.

What I found was one of the most peaceful, quietly extraordinary port experiences of the whole trip.

The totem poles aren't in a museum. They're standing in the forest - among the trees, surrounded by nature, each one telling a story that goes back generations. Reading about the different totems was a beautiful way to learn. Walking among them was something else entirely. Sitka was quiet and unhurried and I could have stayed there all day.

I also ate Pel'meni for the first time (but not the last) - these small, dense, savory dumplings are a Sitka institution, served from a tiny counter with your choice of toppings. Highly recommended. Do not skip this.

We attended a storytelling show by the Alaska Storytellers, who told the history of Sitka from the Russian perspective and wove in traditional dances from several eras. It was one of those experiences that reframes a place - and this show did it with grace and compassion for all of the people involved.

The Russian Orthodox cathedral sits at the center of town, different from the grand European cathedrals I've seen but uniquely beautiful in its own rugged way. Sitka has a quality of being genuinely itself - not performing for tourists, not trying to be something it isn't.

I could have stayed another day. Or more. Easily.

What the Ship Made Possible

Here's something I want to tell you about Azamara specifically, because it shaped everything above.

We never waited in line to get off the ship. Not once. With other cruise lines, I've waited 45 minutes to an hour just to disembark. On Azamara, we walked off. That sounds small until you realize how much of a port day can disappear when you’re waiting in line.

When we were docked far from the city center, Azamara provided free shuttles. When the port required tendering - which means traveling from the ship to shore by small boat rather than docking directly, something Azamara does more than most lines - we almost never waited. The tender process was smooth in a way that felt almost suspiciously easy.

Our port days were long. Often more than ten hours ashore. We never felt rushed. We never had to cut something short because the ship was leaving. In some ports, the larger ships had all-aboard times as early as 11:30am - which genuinely made me wonder: what can you actually see in that amount of time?

In Sitka, the Captain made a joke over the intercom about beating a Four Seasons yacht to the better "parking spot" in the water. The whole ship laughed. It was that kind of sailing.

One More Thing

Before we left, we made a running joke in our pre-trip emails about Elizabeth not hugging the bears. It became a bit. Every communication had a small reminder. No hugging the bears, Elizabeth.

Well, I found a bear.

It was in Seward. It was not a real bear. It was the kind of bear you can hug without consequence, and I hugged it with my whole heart, and I have zero regrets.

The real bears - we saw exactly one, from a bus in Denali, through our driver's zoom lens, on a screen, from very far away. I maintain that this was the correct amount of real bear for me.

What I Know Now That I Didn't Before

Alaska surprised me. Not because I thought it would be bad - I knew it would be beautiful. But I didn't know it would be this. The waterfalls you stumble on. The blue of glacier ice. The sea lion who has places to be. The totem poles standing in the forest like they've always been there, because they have.

I went as someone who knew Alaska from the research. I came back as someone who knows it from being there.

That's a different thing entirely.

Alaska is on The Alaska Shortlist for a reason — and now we can tell you exactly why from firsthand experience. [View The Alaska Shortlist →] or reach out directly. We'd love to tell you more.