Sunsets

[Giantfan13]

I have read so many things about the amount of daylight that is available in Alaska, BUT, are there regular sunsets??. Does it get completely dark at night or is it a twilight sort of darkness. We love to watch as many sunsets as possible (we really belong in Teahouse of the August Moon), but we just can't find any info on this. What's the story on this??

[tinydancer21]

The farther north you come the more sunlight you'll get, today is soltice, the longest day of the year, the sun won't go down at all today and it will be full daylight out all day in Fairbanks. After tomorrow we will start "loosing sunlight" so the day's will gradually start to get shorter until the shortest day of the year when it is totally dark all day. If your coming to Fairbanks, you won't see a sunset in the summer time, and bearly twilight the darkest it will get is like morning light. On the Southeast however you'll have days that are a little shorter and might get more twilight.

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[ute_fan]

I'm sure it depends on how far north you go. On our recent cruise (6/6) to Skagway/Ketchikan/Wrangell/Juneau, we had a couple of beautiful sunsets.

A couple of nights it was too cloudy, but the night we left Vancouver was great. The sunset occurs quite late at night (9:30-10:30 time frame), but lasted a long time.

It will depend a lot on what area you are going to and what time of year it is.

NCL Sun 06/04
NCL Sea 01/04

[Gardyloo]

What is it about "midnight sun" that you don't understand? [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Mountains get in the way, of course. But don't count on dark dark skies in places like Fairbanks or Anchorage until much later in the summer/early fall. In the arctic don't plan on it until September. In Southeast twilight will last longer than in the L48 but it will get dark.

[Host Caroline]

IMHO only the sunsets in Alaska are absolutely gorgeous... and this time of summer last for hours. We have some unbelievably beautiful pics of skies going from golden to shades of pink/purple/gray over the ice near Glacier Bay and on a magical evening sailing up Cook Inlet to Anchorage on Island PRincess in '98 -- one of our most memorable evenings on any cruise. The sky stays gray for a good while this time of year as there is so little darkness and softball games "under the lights" don't go "Under the lights" till after 10 (or the game we went to didn't.....)

Host Caroline
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[Giantfan13]

Thanks. We will be sailing northbound from Vancouver to Whittier on Aug 23 to aug 30. If clear, I would assume we would see some really nice sunsets.