Cruise ports in United States

The United States ports here fall into two groups that have almost nothing in common. Five are in southeast Alaska — Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka and Icy Strait Point — and one, Catalina Island, is off the coast of southern California on short Baja sailings. They share a currency and a language and very little else.

The Alaska ports are small, remote and reached far more easily by sea than by road; Juneau, the state capital, has no road connection to the rest of the country at all. Getting ashore varies: Ketchikan and Skagway berth you in or beside the town, Juneau usually does but tenders when several ships call at once, and Sitka needs a shuttle from a dock 8 km out or a tender.

Weather varies more across the Alaska five than the short distances suggest. Ketchikan is among the wettest inhabited places in North America at over three metres of rain a year, while Skagway sits in a rain shadow and gets roughly a fifth of that. Sitka faces the open Pacific and loses the occasional call to swell.

Catalina is the outlier in every respect: mild and dry rather than wet and cool, tendered into a town of 3,500 where private cars are effectively banned and residents drive golf carts. It appears on three and four-night sailings from Los Angeles and Long Beach, usually paired with Ensenada.