Alaska - a land of superlatives

At 570,000 square miles it's bigger than Texas -- twice as big, in fact -- and it would take three Californias, 12 New Yorks, or 470 Rhode Islands to equal it in size! It is home to North America's tallest peak, Mount McKinley and an intriguing, culturally diverse destination with thousands of miles of scenic coastline that make it a natural for cruise ships. Each of the ports offers a different perspective on life in the most northerly U.S. state. Ketchikan (which dubs itself "Alaska's First City" because it's the first place ships dock on the northbound Inside Passage cruise) is a center of Tlingit (pronounced KLING-kit) Indian culture. Its totem pole parks and museums reflect that Indian heritage. Juneau, the capital city, and one of America's most photogenic seats of state government, seems, in some ways, less Alaskan than other ports -- as might be expected from a city in which a third of whose residents are civil servants, many of them outsiders. Skagway, the port of entry for 1898's Klondike gold seekers, is heavily Gold Rush-era oriented (if, that is, you can overlook the sign on the side of the Mercantile Building which proclaims "We proudly serve Starbucks coffee"). Petersburg's theme is Norwegian, Valdez's is the Alaska Pipeline (it's the southernmost terminal), remnants of Alaska's Russian past are to be found in Sitka.