One Booking, Three Landscapes: How Bumble Expeditions Packs Alaska Into A Single Day

Most Alaska shore excursions ask travelers to choose between wildlife, rainforest, or coastal scenery. Bumble Expeditions, based in Sitka, Alaska, built its signature experience around a different idea: that a single booking should seamlessly combine all three. Instead of asking guests to choose one side of Alaska, the itinerary moves through land, sea, and a private island in a single day.

Bumble Expeditions’ signature land-and-sea experience combines a guided marine wildlife excursion with a land-based journey through Sitka, Alaska, before concluding with the option to visit Mertz Island, the company’s privately owned four-acre island in Sitka Sound. Rather than booking separate excursions over multiple days, guests experience three distinct Alaskan landscapes within a single carefully coordinated itinerary. Guests can move from a wildlife-focused boat crossing to a walking route through old-growth forest to a private cove reachable only by water.

A Route That Changes With The Water

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sam Avery Photography

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sam Avery Photography

The sea portion of the day isn’t scripted. Guides adjust the route in real time, based on where wildlife is active and how the water is moving, so the marine wildlife excursion itself becomes part of what a photographer or a curious traveler is there for, not simply the way guests get from one stop to the next. Sea otters drift through kelp forests, bald eagles soar overhead, sea lions haul out on rocky ledges, and whales or bears turn up often enough to keep everyone watching the water. No two days out here look the same. Sea otters drifting through kelp forests, bald eagles soaring overhead, sea lions resting on rocky ledges, and whales or bears are among the wildlife guests may encounter, although every day on the water is different.

The land portion transitions into the Tongass National Forest and Sitka’s coastal shoreline, where guides introduce guests to Southeast Alaska’s temperate rainforest, local history, and hidden viewpoints rarely experienced from the water alone.

Where The Island Fits

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sam Avery Photography

For guests who choose the full experience, Mertz Island becomes the final chapter of the day. Accessible only by boat, the privately owned four-acre island offers secluded shoreline, forest trails, and a private island cove in Sitka Sound reserved for just five private groups each season. The stop closes with a picnic prepared by Bumble Expeditions’ own Misfit Island Café, letting the experience remain entirely in-house from departure to final meal. Limiting island bookings to five per season keeps the setting from becoming a second version of the marine wildlife excursion and instead makes it feel like its own distinct stop.

Delivering an itinerary that spans land, sea, and a private island requires considerably more than simply operating a boat. Bumble Expeditions combines marine operations, commercial transportation, federal and municipal operating permits, a privately owned island, and its own café into a single guest experience, an unusually integrated model in Alaska’s independent tourism industry. The company also serves guests through partnerships with seven major international cruise lines while maintaining the permits required to operate across the City of Sitka, State of Alaska, and the Tongass National Forest.

A Day Built To Be Photographed In Three Registers

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sam Avery Photography

What sets the format apart visually is the range within a single itinerary. A morning on the water produces a different kind of image than an afternoon in the forest, and the island close, with its own light and its own quiet, produces a third. Few single-day Alaska excursions are built to provide a traveler with a range without requiring multiple bookings across multiple days.

For a company built by people with no formal tourism background before founding it in 2023, that range is not an accident so much as a reflection of how deliberately the offering has been assembled: land, sea, or both, with the island held in reserve for the groups who want the fullest version of the day.