It’s no secret that many modern cruise ships are massive. The 815-foot-long Celebrity Century accommodates more than 3,000 passengers and crew on its 14 decks. It contains two sprawling dining rooms, a huge galley, a couple of theaters and dozens of other public spaces in addition to all those staterooms. It really is impressive, not only in size, but as a feat of ingenuity and engineering. Heck, it weighs 71,000 tons and it floats! Then there are the logistics we first witnessed on the docks as pallets of provisions were loaded by crane onto the ship. A weeklong syncronized symphony supports a cruise.

The Century in Icy Straight.

And yet, as impressive as it is, this magnificence shrinks almost before your eyes on an Alaska cruise. Nothing against the ship. It was a wonderful venue from which to experience a bit of the Great Land. Or the crew. They were top notch. But on the scale of Alaska, the Century is like a really luxurious dinghy. And in the face of the natural world, even man’s great feats feel smaller.

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In terms of human population, the ship actually compared favorably with the huge, sparsely-populated state. It contained four times the population of Hoonah, our first port of call, and a full 10 percent of that of the state capital, our second stop.

Wildlife? That’s another story. And territory? Talk about wide open spaces! After embarkation from Vancouver, for 46 hours 800 miles of mostly British Columbian wilderness floated by enroute to Icy Straight Point, a tiny enclave of about 800 people at an intersection of sea and rain forest-blanketed mountains. This map pinpoint on Alaska’s southeastern sliver seems like a Great Land in its own right

From shore, our floating resort is dwarfed a bit in this grand setting. The next day the pilots thread the Century through ice bergettes and approach the 300-foot-high, 6-mile-wide face of the Hubbard Glacier — a massive frozen river stretching 76 miles to its source in Canada. Alaskans are happy to boast about their land’s greatness.  Upon learning that the audience included a couple from Texas, the bawdy piano player at Juneau’s Red Dog Saloon engaged in a little big-state rivalry: “We’ve thought about splitting Alaska in half so Texas could be the third largest state.”

Hubbard Glacier

One thing I loved about our ship was that, in addition to funny comedians and courteous waiters, a naturalist enlightened us about the land, people and wildlife. As we approached, he explained the Hubbard Glacier in terms of the hydrology cycle: The chunks thunderously calving — breaking off as the advancing glacier meets the Pacific — are completing a cycle of evaporation, precipitation, compaction, and  gravity, pushing them — at a glacial pace, of course — toward the ocean.  The brochure language on this day was wonderfully underhyped: “Cruising Hubbard Glacier.” The crew did tell us that not every group gets as clear and sunny a day as we enjoyed. This magnificent experience more than compensated for the ice bar in the martini lounge, which was not as cool as advertised.

We all like food, and the Century sure delivered on that.  I had some great lamb and salmon in the dining room. There was sushi every night at the buffet. And fresh gelato was available everyday. This is quite a temptation at no extra charge. It’s always easier to snack when you don’t have to fork over any cash. Good thing you can watch Alaska go by from the treadmill in the gym or on the jogging track on deck to stay in equilibrium.

SHORE TIME As with any cruise, you can customize your shore days. We approached out three shore days in three different ways:

Good crab at Icy Straight Point

Icy Straight Point: Ironically, we scheduled nothing at the port with the least to do. While what was billed as the world’s longest zip line sounded fun, I just couldn’t justify more than 100 bucks for a 90-second thrill, and I figured it would be good exercise to walk the area rather than sign up for a driving tour. It worked out fine. We walked on the beautiful nature trail and to the tiny town of Hoonah, read the exhibits about how the salmon cannery once operated, and ate some tasty fresh crab and crab bisque on the pier.

Juneau: Here I booked an excellent three-in-one excursion through Shore Trips on my Expedia web site. First, we got in a small boat for whale watching. This activity had never yielded any actual whales for us in Southern California. Here, we were treated to the wonderful spectacle of a dozen humpbacks continuously diving and surfacing in what is called bubble feeding while a baby spun in the air. It was as if the folks at Sea World had scheduled a show and flipped a switch. This was emphasized when the skipper pointed out an eagle perched high in a tree. As if on queue, the magnificent bird took flight in the same direction as us. After the boat trip, we were driven to the Mendenhall Glacier interpretive center to learn more about these rivers of ice and on to an outdoor “salmon bake” for good salmon, great chowder and vintage Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens music in a streamside grove . We still had the afternoon to visit the Alaska State Museum for its exhibits about the people and history of the 49th state. The highlight was the stuffed eagle and nest. Like the state, both were big! So were the stuffed bears, which are impressive animals you don’t want to mess with. On a stroll through the town, we stopped at Mt. Juneau Trading Post, a great shop owned by a local native family and specializing in authentic native art, then finished up at the  Red Dog Saloon for an Alaskan Amber Ale and some laughs in a setting meant to recall Alaska’s rough-and-tumble gold mining era.

Lumberjack show

Ketchikan: Here I booked a Celebrity Cruise Lines trip, which, like Shore Trips, worked out great. As with Juneau, I booked activities I believed would give us the “baseline” Alaska experiences, figuring that we could do the extraordinary, expensive and time-consuming ones, such flying onto a glacier and dog sledding, on a return trip someday. In Ketchikan, we whetted our appetite with The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show and a visit to the Potlach Totem park. The lumberjack show is admittedly kitschy and touristy, but it was also great fun and the entertainers really do exhibit serious athletic skills required in the trade. The park was a great education in the lives of the area’s native people and the stories told through their totems. We didn’t get a live carving demonstration but were able to see a totem in progress by a present-day native artist and purchase a small replica carved by a member of the Tinglit tribe. There were cheaper replicas made in China, but that just didn’t seem right. We learned the lessons of stories involving the raven, eagle, frog, wolf, bear, and salmon that helped the people understand their world and transmit their values — generosity being an important one. We saw replicas of a lodge and smokehouse, and learned that totems are allowed to naturally age and decay as part of their own life cycle.

Despite our wonderful whale watching experience, we never saw salmon in a stream, a moose or a bear — I’ve seen my share of the latter at uncomfortably close range in Yosemite. So I guess we’ll just have to return to Alaska.

ABOARD THE SHIP The crew of the Century certainly lived up to its promise of excellent service. Everyone from the activities staff to the room stewards was exceedingly friendly and motivated to make the experience exceptional. The entertainment, particularly the comedians, was top notch. I loved it when they made fun of shipboard processes like the tenders to shore and the disinfectant dispensing crew members. We very much enjoyed the food, which we learned on the galley tour was made from scratch on ship. Our time on the ship could be as relaxing or invigorating as we chose. We played a little bingo and dominoes, competed in a little trivia and also worked out in the gym and read a couple of books. The ship feels remarkably uncrowded, with many nooks and crannies for hanging out. The balance of time worked out well with just the right parts relaxation and stimulation.

ODDS AND ENDS

Dressing for dinner

The spoiing factor: The transition back to real life is the harder one. It’s easy to get used to constant service; not as much fun to start doing your own dishes again.

Diverse passenger crowd: This cruise was definitely not “senior central.” Families with kids, honeymooners and middle aged adults brought the average age down. Although most passengers were American and Canadian, there were large contingents and Asians and Europeans as well as a few Aussies.

More glacier facts: Native Alaskans called calving “white thunder.” Glaciers are sometimes called “God’s great plows” because of their ability to break down and move rock. U-shaped fiords were carved by glaciers. V-shaped valleys were carved by liquid rivers. Glaciers need a slope so gravity has a place to move the ice. Like rivers, they erode and transport materials. Ice in the middle flows faster, like water in a river. Moraine is the rubble glaciers carve from rock. Terminal moraine is as the glacier breaks off into a sea or lake. The Hubbard is one of the few advancing glaciers in Alaska (about 5%), which means it is receiving more snow at the top each year than it casts into the sea.

Mendenhall Glacier

The Mendenhall is retreating. John Muir visited Alaska in the 1870s. His lucid and poetic (if long winded) words about glaciers led to steamships out of Seattle taking people to see them. Colonization is the process by morain gradually transitions to forests. The coastline along the Hubbard is known as Disenchantment Bay because explorers were disappointed that it was not the Northwest Passage they sought. Blue ice is denser than white. Glaciers have rock mixed in with the ice.