Our Top-5 reasons to make Southeast Alaska your 2017 nature experience. Highlights from Naturalist Journeys’ Southeast Alaska Wildlife & Birding Tour.
![Southeast Alaska](https://blog.naturalistjourneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Glacier-Bay-pano-AKSE-PEAB-300x113.jpg)
1: It’s Not a Cruise!
As a company, we’ve typically stayed away from Southeast Alaska for our birding and nature tours, turned off by throngs of cruise tourists. We’ve read reports of cruise ships’ negative affect on local towns and native communities, keeping profits within the cruise company — and that’s just not our goal as a company (check out our mission statement). We looked long and hard to find an “un-cruise” option in the region and we struck gold when Naturalist Journeys’ owner Peg Abbott visited the town of Gustavus, and its wonderful Gustavus Inn. Dave Lesh, owner and proprietor, has welcomed guests for 35+ years, carrying on three generations of family tradition. This beautiful and quintessential Alaskan inn allows us to live like locals for a week in the heart of Southeast Alaska’s iconic beauty, where we can simply unpack once, relax, and soak it all in. It’s a nature tour at its finest (and quite possibly at its most relaxing).
![Southeast Alaska](https://blog.naturalistjourneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Humpback-Whale-tail-fluke-curve-drip-long-crop-AKSE-PEAB-300x113.jpg)
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