Closer to Home

Not every milestone needs a passport.

I say that as someone who has just come home from Alaska and is already deep in the planning for Italy, so you will understand I am not arguing against the long-haul trip. I am only saying that it is not the single shape a celebration has to take, and that some of the loveliest travel I can put in front of you at the moment is happening about four hours’ flying time from where most of you live.

American Cruise Lines has been quietly building something for several years now. They are the largest river cruise line in the United States, they operate the only fully American-flagged fleet of small ships in the world, and they have been at it for about fifty years. Two parts of what they have built deserve rather more attention than they currently get.

The Great Lakes, without leaving the country. For the first time in decades, an American ship is sailing domestic itineraries on the Great Lakes. That sounds like a technicality, and it very much is not, so let me explain why it matters to you.

Other ships on the Lakes cross into Canada, which means they have to dock at ports built for international entry. Those ports are industrial and functional and almost always some distance from anything you would actually like to see. An all-American ship has no need of them at all. It can tie up in the heart of a small town, at a city park, or at a private marina, and you step off the ship already where you wanted to be.

There are three itineraries, all sailing aboard American Patriot, and the 2027 dates are open now.

Nine days, Great Lakes and Thousand Islands. Between Syracuse and Buffalo, beginning with an included hotel night in Syracuse. There is Boldt Castle on the St. Lawrence, a glass-bottom boat over a Great Lakes shipwreck and the Rock Island Lighthouse, a winery tour in the Thousand Islands, and the Susan B. Anthony House. And then Niagara at the end of it, with all its noise and mist.

Nine days, Lake Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Round trip from Milwaukee, with time in the city before you board. You will see a nineteenth-century company town at the Fayette Historic Townsite, and Escanaba with its church steeples and its Swedish pastries, and the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay with its seventy-odd locomotives. There is a trolley through Muskegon that stops at the lighthouses and the submarine museum, and a docent-led tour of the Harley-Davidson Museum with proper time to linger afterward.

Fourteen days, American Great Lakes. Buffalo to Milwaukee, eight hundred miles across Erie, Huron and Michigan, with Niagara at one end and the Harley museum at the other. Detroit brings the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, the Detroit Institute of Art and Motown. There is a shipwreck at Alpena, a narrated run down the St. Marys River and through the Soo Locks, and Mackinac Island by horse-drawn carriage with a visit to the Grand Hotel. Then the Silver Lake Sand Dunes and a Michigan winery, an afternoon on a Lake Michigan beach with paddleboards and kayaks, the Meijer Gardens, and Holland with its working Dutch windmill and lunch at a blueberry farm.

If you asked me which of the three to take, I would send most people toward the fourteen-day. It is long enough that you stop keeping score and simply settle into it.

The ship. American Patriot carries one hundred and thirty guests. Every stateroom has a private balcony. She is fully stabilized, there are elevators to every deck, and there is a top-deck lounge with a walking track, which matters a good deal more than it sounds like it should on a route with this many slow and scenic hours in it.

And here is the detail I most want the solo travelers among you to see. Single staterooms are available with no supplement at all. Not a reduced supplement, none. If you have spent years quietly absorbing a forty or fifty percent penalty for traveling on your own, and a number of you have told me that you have, then this alone is worth a conversation.

Fares include the hotel night before you board, daily guided excursions, onboard enrichment, all your meals, cocktails, Wi-Fi and gratuities. Some departure dates include complimentary domestic airfare as well.

Alaska, the other way round. I have just written you a long letter about seven nights in Alaska aboard a ship carrying 4,300 people, and I loved every minute of it without reservation. So please take what follows as a comparison rather than a correction. These are two genuinely different trips, and which one is right depends entirely on who is going.

American runs seven Alaska itineraries ranging from nine to nineteen days, sailing from Juneau, Ketchikan and Tacoma, with land and cruise packages that begin in Fairbanks. The headline is one thing the large ships simply cannot do. American is among very few lines permitted to spend the night anchored inside Glacier Bay National Park. Not a day transit through it, but an evening, a night and a morning, in the park.

The rest of the map is Endicott Arm, Icy Strait Point, Mendenhall, and the small Southeast towns such as Petersburg, Wrangell and Haines that the larger ships mostly pass by.

To give you a sense of the range, at fares published this month: Southeast Alaska, nine days round trip from Juneau, from about $6,335; Alaskan Explorer, twelve days, Ketchikan to Juneau, from about $9,425, with complimentary airfare and up to $1,500 in savings currently on selected dates; Alaska Inside Passage, sixteen days, Juneau to Tacoma, from about $9,450; Alaska National Parks, sixteen days, Fairbanks to Juneau, from about $14,535; and Grand Alaska National Parks, nineteen days, Fairbanks to Ketchikan, from about $18,535.

And unless you are crossing into Canada on an excursion from Skagway, you will not need a passport at all.

What this is not. I would far rather tell you this now than have you discover it for yourself in the first week.

A one-hundred-and-thirty-guest American ship is not a large-ship experience, and it is not attempting to be one. There is no casino. There is no production show in a domed theatre. There are not several heated pools, nor a spa with a treatment menu as long as your arm. The evenings are earlier and quieter, and the entertainment is a historian, a naturalist, or a local musician brought aboard for the night.

If what you are after is spectacle and constant motion, and that is a perfectly good thing to want because we have just had a wonderful week of precisely that, then take the large ship and let us help you choose the right one.

But if what you want is a small dining room where the crew know your name by Tuesday, a balcony you will genuinely sit on, excursions that are already paid for, and a town you can walk straight into without waiting for a shuttle, then this is very difficult to beat.

Who I would send. First-time cruisers: small, calm, American and entirely unintimidating — a gentle way to find out whether this sort of travel suits you before committing to something larger. Solo travelers: see the supplement note above, which changes the arithmetic completely. Anyone weary of airports: a domestic flight, no passport, no currency to sort out, and no customs queue at either end of the trip. Families gathering across generations: a small ship keeps everyone genuinely in the same place, which a 4,300-guest ship cannot do no matter how hard you try. Travelers pacing themselves: elevators to every deck, a stabilized hull, excursions graded gently, and no pressure at all to be anywhere quickly.

If this sounds like your year. Both the Great Lakes and the Alaska programs have 2027 dates open now, and the good staterooms on a one-hundred-and-thirty-guest ship go early for the simple reason that there are not very many of them.

Send us your dates and we will tell you honestly whether this is the right trip for you, or whether you would be happier on something else altogether. That answer is free, and we give it more often than you might expect.

Warmly, Kari · Kingfisher Luxury Travel

Sources: American Cruise Lines, “American Launches First All U.S. Cruises on The Great Lakes,” press release, 25 September 2025, including itinerary highlights, inclusions and American Patriot ship specifications.

American Cruise Lines, Alaska cruise program pages, accessed 14 September 2026, for itinerary lengths, departure ports, Glacier Bay overnight access and published starting fares.

Fares are per person based on double occupancy, are capacity-controlled, and change without notice. Offers apply to selected dates and new bookings only. Please confirm current pricing and availability with us before making any plans.