We Skipped the Sitka Excursion (And Won the Day) | Harmony Horizon 360
Every single person getting off our ship in Sitka had a plan. Matching rain jackets. Lanyards. QR codes on their phones for a bus that was going to take them somewhere very official and very organized.
We had a shuttle ticket, one address, and a level of confidence that honestly wasn't earned yet.
Here's the thing about ship excursions: they are wonderful, and I will never talk anyone out of booking one. But every so often, my husband and I get off a ship with no plan whatsoever and just... go see. This was one of those days. We'd decided we wanted to see Fortress of the Bear, so we bought a shuttle ticket into town and left the rest completely blank.
Our shuttle driver turned out to be the best part of the morning before we'd even arrived anywhere. He had opinions on everything — bear behavior, the best coffee in Sitka, which cruise lines tip better, why the salmon run was running late that year — delivered with zero hesitation and total confidence, whether we'd asked or not. If you want the real texture of a place, skip the audio guide and just talk to whoever's driving.
And because we weren't on a scheduled ship excursion with forty other people and a very precise return time, we got to Fortress of the Bear before the actual excursion buses did. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves. No shuffling past the enclosure in a line. No craning around someone's selfie stick. Just us, the bears, and all the time we wanted to stand there.
I will fully admit this is the kind of thing that only sounds impressive after it works. If you'd asked me that morning whether "buy one shuttle ticket and hope" was a real plan, I would have laughed and said absolutely not. But that's kind of the whole point of Reset & Roam — you don't need every hour scheduled to have a good day. Sometimes the best excursion is the one nobody sold you.
We've written before about how we choose (or don't choose) excursions for Alaska, and about what Alaska did to our sense of time in general — Sitka was the day that made both of those posts make sense in hindsight.
We're Choosing Alaska Cruise Excursions (The Great Glacier Nap Debate) — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel
What Alaska Did to My Sense of Time — Harmony Horizon 360 — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel
If you want more of these — the real, unscheduled, occasionally lucky moments, before they turn into anything bigger — that's exactly what shows up in the Roam Newsletter first.
Join the Journey — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel
And if Sitka has you daydreaming about your own trip north, Upcoming Trips shows what's currently on the calendar — and Book Your Journey is there whenever you're ready to make it real. No pressure, just the door left open.
Upcoming Trips — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel
Book Your Journey — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel
Tracy Woods, Travel Advisor — Independent Agent of FST No. ST15578 and CST No. 2090937-50.
I Haven't Even Told You About the Real Wish List Yet. Help Me Pick What's Next.
My browser currently has fewer open tabs than my brain.
Right now, I'm thinking about at least three trips in very different stages of real. The Alaska 2027 group cruise, which is very real and very much happening and just needs a few more cabins. The Caribbean, which is still just a maybe — the kind where I've done the initial digging but haven't committed to a single thing. And the Mediterranean, which isn't even a daydream so much as unfinished business — we've already been once, and it's the kind of trip that keeps quietly tapping me on the shoulder to go back.
(If you're catching up — here's where things stand with We're Choosing Alaska Cruise Excursions (The Great Glacier Nap Debate) — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel and here's What We're Actually Looking For in a Short Caribbean Cruise (Trip Not Booked Yet) — Harmony Horizon 360 Travel.)
And that's not even the full list. That's just the stuff I've actually mentioned to you.
Here's what I haven't told you about yet: the real wish list. The ones further out — the ones I think about at a stop light and then immediately talk myself out of because "not yet." Ireland. An actual, honest-to-goodness world cruise. The Panama Canal. And — because I'm currently knee-deep in Princess certification training — Greenland and New England have both recently shown up uninvited and made themselves at home.
None of these are close to being planned. Some of them might not happen for years. But I'd rather tell you about the whole pile than pretend I only think about the three trips I've already written blog posts on.
So here's my actual question, and it's not rhetorical: of that wish list — Ireland, a world cruise, the Panama Canal, Greenland, or New England — which one do you want me to actually start seriously researching first? Not just daydreaming about. Actually digging into: itineraries, timing, whether it works as a group trip.
Comment below and tell me which one you'd pick. And if you'd rather get this kind of behind-the-scenes planning before it ever makes it to the blog, join the newsletter — that's where the real-time version happens.
CTA: Join the Roam Newsletter →Join the Journey
More soon. Possibly at a stop light, still deciding.
— Tracy
Should We Plan a Mediterranean Cruise? (Asking For Myself, At 11pm, With Seventeen Tabs Open)
It's 11:14pm. Jamie is asleep. I am not asleep. I am doing the thing where I open one cruise line's website "just to look," and ninety minutes later I have seventeen tabs open, a spreadsheet I didn't mean to make, and a very strong opinion about balcony cabins on the port side.
This is how it always starts. Not with a decision. With a spiral.
Here's the thing — we've actually done the Mediterranean before. A cruise with friends, years ago, before Reset & Roam was even a phrase I said out loud. We ate our body weight in bread. We got lost in a way that was charming for the first hour and character-building for the second. We came home different, in that quiet way good trips do that to you.
So you'd think going back — again by ship — would be the easy part. It is not the easy part.
Because now I'm the person who plans other people's dream trips for a living, which means I am incapable of just looking at a cruise itinerary and going "sure, that looks nice." I am looking at port days and mentally scoring them for pace. I am asking whether seven ports in seven days is a vacation or an endurance event. I am doing this at 11pm on a Tuesday for a trip that is not booked, not planned, and not even fully agreed upon.
Jamie's official position, when I bring it up over dinner, is "sure, let's do it," delivered with the same enthusiasm he'd use to agree we should probably clean the garage eventually. Supportive. Vague. Not actually helpful.
So here's where we actually are, honestly:
• We know we want to go back.
• We do not know if it should be a cruise or a slower land trip, round two.
• We do not know when — 2027 is spoken for with Alaska, so realistically we're talking 2028.
• We are considering if we do cruise it, wanting fewer ports with more hours in each one, not the itinerary that brags about hitting five countries before breakfast.
That last one is the part that actually matters. Because the question underneath "should we plan a Mediterranean cruise" isn't really about the Mediterranean. It's the same question that's underneath every trip I help plan: are we building a trip that fits how we actually like to travel, or are we building a trip that looks good on paper?
Gentle pace and an exciting trip aren't opposites. Tonight I'm saying it to myself, with seventeen tabs open, trying to believe it applies to my own vacation and not just everyone else's.
I don't have an answer yet. I have a spreadsheet, a sleeping husband, and a trip that's still just an idea we keep circling back to. That's honestly where most good trips start — not with a booking, but with somebody staying up too late, still curious.
If you want to follow along as we actually figure this out — cruise or no cruise, 2028 or someday — that's exactly what the Roam newsletter is for. I'll show my work, tabs and all.
Join the Newsletter if you want to stay informed on our travels, both past and upcoming.