Whittier → Vancouver

Whittier has no airport. Alaska Route 1 leaves Anchorage and runs along Turnagain Arm, water on one side and the Chugach Mountains on the other; in 2000 it was designated an All-American Road, the highest rank a scenic route can hold. An hour and a half, maybe two, the air clear enough to see a long way, and nothing to hurry for.

There is only one road into Whittier: a two-and-a-half-mile tunnel through the mountain, single lane, shared with the railway. In summer, traffic towards the port is released on the half hour and back on the hour. Engines off while you wait, the mountain right there through the window. It is the longest combined highway and rail tunnel in North America.

At mile 79 of Route 1 there is a 200-acre sanctuary, home to seventeen species and not one of them taken for display — each arrived orphaned or injured and stayed: brown bears, moose, muskox, wood bison, bald eagles. A mile-and-a-half loop you can drive slowly. A few days later, at Haines, you will see the eagles again — overhead this time.Illustrative. Commercial use of photographs taken at the centre requires its written permission; this brown bear was photographed in the wild.

The run up to Haines follows a fjord ninety miles long and more than six hundred metres deep, its sides dropping straight into the water. Luminara carries just over four hundred guests, so however narrow the fjord gets, she can follow it. Coffee arrives, and on every side are the walls the glaciers left behind.

On two of these days the yacht calls nowhere: on the second she crosses the Gulf of Alaska, and on the seventh she runs south from Klawock to Vancouver. Those two squares on the itinerary are empty, and that is the point. All two hundred and twenty-six suites on Luminara have a terrace, so the door slides open onto the sea; four hundred and fifty-two guests to three hundred and seventy-four crew. No tender to catch, nothing to be on time for, and the day is yours.