Alaska, America's "Last Frontier," is home to craggy glaciers, raging rivers, snow-capped mountains and miles upon miles of wild, windblown tundra. The state shares a border and much of its topographical characteristics with western Canada -- specifically, the snowy provinces of British Columbia and the Yukon.
Alaska cruises tour the Inside Passage, the state's southeastern leg, from the cannery town of Ketchikan to Glacier Bay National Park. They also can traverse the Gulf of Alaska to reach Seward, the port for Anchorage, the state's largest city, and other ports along the southern coast.
Alaska cruise tours, meanwhile, skim the coastline as well as explore the state's vast interior. Common targets for these vacations are Denali National Park, about 150 miles north of Anchorage, and Fairbanks, a former Gold Rush town some 200 miles northeast of Denali. Some cruise tours even cross the border into Canada, making stops as far east as Calgary, Jasper and Lake Louise, all popular points in the province of Alberta.