Caching On An Alaskan Cruise?

[+Combers]

Anyone ever cached at the ports of call of an Alaskan cruise? I'm doing a seven-day cruise next week and plan to checkout Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. Anyone done this before?

 

Hmmm ... cruise ... floating caches ...

[+Team GPSaxophone]

Just don't plan on placing a vacation cache while you're there.

[robertlipe]

It sounds like you're doing the same tour (Princess - specifically Coral Princess) that I did for our 15'th anniv. last month. I got at least one cache in each port of call. We tacked on a few days in Anchorage before heading south. (The ones in Anchorage were the only ones where we had an auto and my wife uses an electric scooter and she joined me on all in the PoC's and most in Anchorage...)

 

In reverse order, here are the ones I hit:

 

http://cachestats.made.nu/findsdetail.asp?...cacher_id=32733

 

In fact, I still have the script that I used to process my incoming PQ's in case it helps:

 

gpsbabel -i gpx -f ~/src/geo/mgpx/Anchorage -xarc,file=/home/robertl/src/geo/rou
te/anch.arc,distance=20 -xradius,lat=-149.88,lon=61.21 -o gpx -F ~/src/geo/mgpx/
AlaskaTrip
gpsbabel -i gpx -f ~/src/geo/mgpx/Juneau -xradius,lat=55.34,lon=-131.64,distance
=5 -o gpx -F ~/src/geo/mgpx/KetchTrip
gpsbabel -i gpx -f ~/src/geo/mgpx/Juneau -xradius,lat=59.45,lon=-135.32,distance
=5 -o gpx -F ~/src/geo/mgpx/SkagwayTrip
gpsbabel -i gpx -f ~/src/geo/mgpx/Juneau -xradius,lat=58.34,lon=-134.58,distance
=15 -o gpx -F ~/src/geo/mgpx/JuneauTrip

 

(There's now a better way to do that within GPSBabel, but there wasn't at the time I was planning that...)

 

This took the two PQ's I ordered up for the area and gave me everything within 20 miles of Anchorage on the way up the road to Talkeetna (Palmer pass, etc.) and everything within 5 miles of Ketchekan and Skagway and, since I couldn't tell exactly where the port was in Juneau, everything within 15 miles of there.

 

(See also: ordering PQ's with a radius too large and filtering locally...)

Edited August 24, 2004 by robertlipe

[+Blaidd-Drwg]

I went on an Alaska cruise aboard the Dawn Princess back in May. I was able to do the following GCGAVG, GCG627, GCGJ2Q, GCGDD7, GCCC4, GC12EA, GCGNKK, GCHPMV. I also did one in Vancouver before the start of the cruise at GC58E9. I did another physical cache in Vancouver, but it has since been archived. Of the caches done in Alaska, about 1/2 were physical caches. There is also a cache near Talkeetna, if you are staying there for a night. All of these caches were within easy walking distance from the docks that our boat pulled into. If you are on another cruise line, some will be closer for you and others will be further, but all should be in walking distance. On the topic of PQs, I just did one for the entire state of Alaska and got all 300+ in the state. I took a trip to the Yukon, but didn't know of any caches there, so if you plan on doing it, you might do a search. Enjoy your trip. My wife and my favorite optional trip was the Helo/dog sledding tour out of Juneau. Pricey, but worth it. Edited August 24, 2004 by Team Madog

[+shunra]

It might be worth checking the proflle of fellow geocacher Hairy Plotter, who works on such a cruise.

[+Gonzo-YT]

There are six caches in Skagway. You could easily get four of them in less than two hours walking around. The other two are also walkable, especially if you made an afternoon of it.

 

Haines has one, if you stop there. It would be a bit of a walk from the ship, but doable.

 

Juneau has a lot of caches, but I haven't cached there so can't help much.

 

If you -- or anyone else, for that matter -- make it into the Yukon, drop me a line and I'll be happy to help out.

 

Regards,

Anthony

[+Shop99er]

We did a Hawaiian cruise this last spring and cached at every port. It was the best part of the whole trip! We saw things that no one else on our ship saw. At dinner every night we'd tell lusty tales of what we'd done...they got on the bus, got off the bus, got on the bus, got off the bus.

 

I highly recommend caching in the ports when you can. In our case we rented a car at each stop and it was worth all the trouble and cost.