Port Guide: Icy Strait Point, Alaska - What We Think You Should Know Before You Go! - ParoDeeJay

hi everybody I'm Dean and I'm Jay and we are pero DJ welcome to another exciting episode of payroll DJ's Port guides we're back I know we are digging into Alaska as you may have noticed and today we're at one of our favorite ports you don't see it on a ton of identities no I see straight point I'm dressed for the occasion yeah I got this there I love it man but I used to straight point is a a cruise complex that was created specifically to cater to cruise ships it's near the town of Huna yes about a mile and a half away um and I guess there's a good number of restaurants and shops and stuff to do at the Port which we'll talk about here in a little bit Yeah but let's go ahead and jump into navigating the port all right now I believe this graphic I have is a little bit old because there are two docks or piers at Icy Street and this kind of only shows one basic idea basic overview anyway exactly so this map shows the original dock which is next to the Adventure Center building but they also have Wilderness Landing which is the second dock that was recently built and that's just a gondola right away is it Gondola or Gondola I've heard those Gondola however you want tomato tomato you know that's true and we did ride the gondola back and forth to say it weird like that so looking at the map starting at the Adventure Center you do have the Adventure park with zip lines and rope Coursey things and I think like nature trails are on there too it looks really cool we haven't done that yet but I do want to make the time to do that yeah uh we've got restaurants and shopping a lot of restaurants a lot of shopping there's a little Cannery Museum which is inside one of the shopping buildings yeah you got the Heritage Center building which is I guess where the clink dancers that's how you pronounce it starts with a T yeah but it's pronounced it's clinkit from my understanding they do like a show in there we have not managed to catch that yet no not yet but we'll get there so many things to do there are you've also got the Excursion docks which is if you book something through the ship that's typically where your water thingamajiggies go from and you have the world's largest zip Rider with a gondola to the top yeah that's fairly new the gondola portion of it because they used to have to take a bus up there um haven't done that don't know if I have any desire to personally do it but hey if you're adventurous I've heard it's amazing and very smooth and loud and we've heard people coming back in yeah no it seems like it would be fun yeah and there is the Excursion Hub which is where you go to meet your independent tours now that's one thing that we have done at Icy straight Point independent tours yes but we'll talk about that in a little while so let's go ahead and go to ship excursions uh now the funny thing was I went on Carnival's website because being our most cruised Cruise Line I usually pull my screenshots from there they didn't really list any excursions they actually didn't have a section for Icy straight Point very strange yeah well they don't go there too often yeah that's true so I went to icy Strait's website which is really who you book all of your stuff through through the cruise line and pulled some screenshots from there so here are six excursions that you can try read them no weep so first up is the Scenic Mountain ascent and world's largest zip Rider of course we just talked about that it's Gondola up down can you go as a companion and ride the gondola back down think you can I don't know the gondola does have to come back down so like maybe if you don't decide to do it like me oh yeah if you get up there and you go no I mean you know you might change your mind yeah I figure like maybe you could just go up for a Scenic ride but you do pay for it oh and it's kind of pricey but it's like their main attraction right there yeah yeah at least when we rode the gondola to Wilderness Landing it back that was free right the one up the mountain no that's not free that's a charge we've got the whale and marine mammals Cruise which of course is a whale watching cruise definitely prevalent in icy straight slash una yeah oh my goodness there's more on that later yeah you know what we're gonna talk about oh we want you okay there's the spaski river valley wildlife and bear search that's a mouthful go off searching for Bears because um they are the town of Huna is on a chichagof island I believe which has a lot of a lot a lot of bears I think it's more bears Than People yeah technically uh I would say that's probably going to be more like once the salmon start running like August September maybe in July as well but maybe not in the early months yeah because people always ask when is the best time to go to Alaska if you're looking for nature it's usually August September I'd say late August early September yeah the back Country Jeep Adventure is the next one I picked I guess that's you get a little bit off the beaten path go bumpity bumping up and you also go on like a wildlife search looking for cars and deer because they've got the uh black-tailed deer there you go I've seen them they're so cute Eagles yes all that stuff the ocean raft adventure oh we're getting more and more adventurous as we go giant inflatable raft vroom vroom around presumably still looking for it's like white water rafting no you just kind of butter around probably looking for nature bears birds and bears and there's a lot of birds and bears and the last one I picked is called in Alaska's wildest kitchen oh I don't know if this takes place at the Port it feels like it does but it was a thing where I guess you get to learn how to fillet a fish and then you actually get to like grill a fish and you learn a lot about the food culture and history of of Alaska that's cool I know that's definitely something I would do culinary people yeah that's awesome so the next section is called exploring on your own now icy street it's one of those ones where it's very easy to explore because it's like a controlled pork area they built this for Cruisers to come in and get a little taste of Alaska without you know straying too far from the ship exactly so you got lots of shops lots of restaurants you may see some things back here on our shelves that were actually purchased oh you pulled it down already is made by a local artist oh yes a sweatshirt we have a lot of things from there I love that they have like kind of Artisans that live there locally that make that and they're settled in the different boutiques and um it's beautiful and one of a kind so yeah for sure but yeah lots of stuff to just walk around see and do history they've even got some shopping over at Wilderness Landing which was the newer there wasn't a whole lot going on when we went because it was newly opened I believe but some shopping and they're kind of developing it over there now it's about a mile and a half if you want to walk to the town of Huna there is a shuttle bus from my understanding I don't know the pricing people have said in Years Gone by it was like five bucks a person yeah and they would take you to Huna and back now a mile and a half is actually quite a pleasant walk home for me yeah if you have like mobility issues I want to check it out um I don't know that it's something you book in advance it's probably something you just go and you just talk to somebody when you're there yeah yeah but good way to get in and see who knows because who knows a cute little town to walk around there's totem poles everywhere to take pictures of it's beautiful yeah so one new section I've been trying to include in here is my hiking section because you know we got to get our hike on and really I guess other than walking to Puna and back they've got the nature trail system at the Port which we walked a little bit of uh we did down by the beach on the one side and then if you do like the activity area with the zipline they have nature trails but I think there there's a fee with that one true yeah but the one if you're at the main dock you can walk all the way around the beach kind of up the hill to where the gondola entrance is on the other side and I believe walk back so you can pick a full circle if you want to walk that nature pretty cool right along the water and another new section of course is rainy day fun because in Alaska it rains a lot yeah um this support I can't really think of a whole lot there is the Heritage uh Center I guess which is indoors shopping restaurants it's an old canner yeah like you can learn about The Old Cannery that's there um that's kind of it's pretty much historic being inside the buildings it's kind of the rainy day funds or wear your raincoat and go outside and explore that's true even better still go whale watching yeah do it speaking of whale watching let's jump to Independent tours because you know sometimes you want to explore on your own without actually being on your own and a good guide is a good thing to have it's invaluable so now every time we've gone to icy straight I have to admit we've done the same thing because it's perfect Glacier wind Charters the whale watching tell me some words alright so it's family owned business it's Teresa Shawn and Casey and they're just the nicest family you feel like family with them um it's smaller boats so it's a more intimate setting you can get up closer to land if you happen to see a bear and things like that they've never not seen a whale when we were with them and I think they said they always see we're good luck they know the hot spots yeah the boat is extremely smooth word to the wise they book up quickly because it is smaller votes um we love it they've got the six percent uh boat and they have the 13 13. so 19 people and they're gonna be full yeah we've seen whale breaching bubble feeding we saw a bear like on the shore we've seen sea lions and otters oh it's just it's beautiful I cannot say enough words about it this is our number one spot we always whale watch now will we eventually do something else but you know we want to go whale watching all right let's get into some tour vendors that are not Glacier wind Charters uh so there's lots of other things to do you may want to go on bear tours you may want to do some more adventurous things so one of the folks that are running good bear tours and things like that we've seen the Huna travel Adventures I'll put links to all these folks in the description uh you've also got Huna ATV tours oh that's fun we've never done yeah it looks like a fun adventure go on exploring on your own drive around that'd be cool have you found any good companies in Huna leave us some links we can add them to the links in the description so check down there for the latest information but just a couple of ideas I guess let's go ahead and jump to free and Frugal fun now we pretty much have talked about almost everything to do in this port which is the restaurants the shopping um the walking around the nature trails yeah that kind of thing one of my favorite things to do is actually just walk along the Waterfront there's like a very pebbley Beach we've seen sea lions there's a resident whale that lives there his name used to be Barry I think it's a different one now we've seen him every time yeah even though he goes away sometimes so you can literally stand on the shore and see a whale generally in this area from the chip yeah definitely um it's just beautiful I feel like it's the most authentic Alaska Port that you can go to in my opinion something about it it's just oh it's just so Serene and peaceful yeah it's funny because even though this is like a cruise Center that they built up something about the area the area close to the town of Huna which is not built right I don't know we love it yeah but focusing so now for this section I'm really just focusing on the port and of course you can ride the gondola back and forth I believe for free to Wilderness limiting so there's another thing you can do so I'm gonna give icy straight points specifically I'm gonna say a 5.5 now that's not including all the cool stuff you can do in Uno right right that's really just the port but I feel like there's enough there where you can make a good day yeah it's a good Port just hanging out I do 5.5 also okay yeah that's on a scale of 10. okay you never know how the scale works all right so an average score of 5.5 uh but yeah I guess that's about it for Icy straight point if you if you have the chance to have your itinerary do like not a lot of ships go there um no but it's not to be missed port in our opinion yeah yeah so hopefully you enjoyed this port guide we've got a lot of other ones on the channel be sure to check the playlist like I said I'm going to put a lot of links and things down in the description if you have not already be sure to subscribe to the channel become a pair romaniac today socialize all our media Facebook Instagram and Twitter yep and until next time and you slapped the table didn't you I'm having issues wow [Music]

Channel: ParoDeeJay

Views: 46,363

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Id: YQgINxnNdhE

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2023