What kind of person likes traveling on cruise ships?  People for whom “Unpack just once!” is an effective sales pitch. A person who wants:

• unlimited access to Denny’s-quality food
• a comfortable travel experience, as much like staying at home as possible
• no risk, and no exposure to cultural challenge
• little chance of personal growth or education
• packaged experience; plastic-wrapped adventure

In short, they don’t really want travel – they prefer comfortable sight-seeing and the illusion of travel. The Disney-fantasy version.  This way, they can delude themselves into thinking they’ve seen the world, without going to the trouble of actually being in it.

It’s universally true that the world views American tourists as warm and kind, open and friendly, fat and naive, rich, and shockingly ignorant. They’re largely right.

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience, the average American on a large cruise ship is a friendly dry-cleaner from Des Moines, who thinks a wedge of iceberg is a salad. A very friendly, loud, fat ignoramus and his wife.

These are comments I actually heard from my fellow Americans on my one cruise-ship experience, from Vancouver through Alaska’s Inside Passage for a week.

“Do I have to change my dollars into Alaska money?”

“What elevation are we, here?”

“Did Canada become a state before Alaska?”

“Does Canada have its own flag?”

“What language do they speak in Alaska?”

“What if those grizzly bears get on the ship?”

It’s hard to see Alaska’s Inside Passage any other way, though, unless you have your own boat.

You can get off the ship at the various stops and go hiking, kayaking or boating, and have close encounters with charismatic wildlife – grizzly bears, moose, eagles, orcas… and, if you’re like me, give your shipmates a break from your snotty judgements. Gotta be back on board by dinner bell, though.

In Juneau I met a man who had been attacked by a mountain lion.

“I live across the bay, on that island yonder. I commute into town every day for work – ride my bike to the ferry. It was a couple of years ago, on my way home from work, when it happened.”

Where?

“I was nearly home, just pedaling along the dirt road, around dusk, when it jumped on my back and knocked me off my bike. No warning. Big sucker. It was a surprise because there are lights and people and a few scattered houses along that road. Some dogs.”

What happened?

“Luckily, I was wearing my day pack, as usual. I guess the pack probably smelled like my lunch. The cat was pinning me down, tearing at the pack. The nearest neighbor was a couple hundred yards away, but luckily he heard me yelling, and came running. When he saw a big cat was on me, he grabbed a broken tree branch and started whaling on its back. It was brave – the cat could’ve gone for him. The branch didn’t faze the cat at all, but it got distracted enough that I could unbuckle the straps. He ran off with the pack.”

Were you badly hurt?

“Just a few bruises and a couple of pretty deep scratches that needed some stitches. Made me kind of paranoid, though.”

A nice August day near Glacier Bay. The Alaska mountains go on and on, range after range. Endless forests, lakes, glaciers, rivers…. wonderful wildlife. In seven days in August, we saw the sun exactly zero times.

While hiking near Skagway we stumbled across a grizzly catching and chomping on salmon. I wanted to get closer for a better picture, but the guide (and the other hikers) vetoed that, with extreme prejudice. We backed away slowly. And quietly.

Bottom line: cruise ships are probably a good choice if you are elderly, in poor health, or lazy, complacent and incurious. I’m just sayin’.