Inside Passage - September 6, 2001 (and September 12)

It must have been astonishing - and frustrating - for James Cook and George Vancouver and other 18th Century explorers who first encountered the bewildering maze of islands and channels that make up what is today called the Inside Passage. Imagine being confronted with a myriad of mysterious channels leading who knew where? All posing the promise of being the magical Northwest Passage. Following each fjord to the interior, the intrepid navigators would encounter massive mountain ranges, towering cliffs, tumbling waterfalls, virginal forests of two-hundred foot tall spruce, while whales, bears, seals, salmon, eagles and other wildlife appeared in such variety and profusion as to be uncountable! But always, in the end, they were stopped by an inevitable face of ice - glaciers pushing inexorably downward to meet the sea. What must have been a mapmaker's nightmare is today cherished as the continent's last great untouched wilderness, harboring the world's largest temperate rain forest. An Eden of the North that captivates every modern-day explorer. The string of islands that form the Inside Passage create a protective barrier to the open sea running from the Washington State/Canadian border and the bottom of Vancouver Island all the way up to the top of Chichagof Island, where the Gulf of Alaska begins its curve westward, offering a supremely serene cruising environment in some of the most dramatic surroundings on earth.