On our first trip to Alaska in late May, we saw bears at Exit Glacier and at Denali. We saw black bears at Exit Glacier and grizzly bears at Denali. In Denali we watched a grizzly snacking on a moose - not quite the same as watching them catch salmon but extremely exciting in its own way. We saw at least seven grizzly bears including a mother and her twins. In late May the wild life viewing was spectacular! A bus tour offered by the park was our only option for touring but it really was a wonderful experience. Ranger Ken was extremely cute as well as knowledgeable. We stopped every time that we saw an animal. We were on the first trip of the morning.

We have hiked to the Russian River Falls (about a five mile round-trip on fairly flat ground) on two of our trips to Alaska. Bears are often spotted there eating salmon. I do not know if there will be bears there in late May; it may be too early for salmon. The RRF are just off the Sterling Highway a few miles past Cooper Landing. We have seen several moose in this area.

Everytime that we have visited Alaska (only six times so far), we have taken one of the Kenai Fiords cruises. We have used different companies - usually the one with the longest cruise at the cheapest cost. In September 2006, our options were limited because many companies had stopped cruising for the year. However, we had one of our best orca sightings ever! In fact our naturalist said that it was one of the best that he had ever experienced. A pod interacted with our boat for over forty-five minutes. The really weird part of this story is that we were on a humpback whale watching cruise in Maui in January 2007 and two of our fellow passengers (we had never met them before) were talking about a cruise that they had taken in Alaska in September 2006. We discovered that we were cruising in Alaska on the same day and possibly on the same boat. What a small world!

We have also taken the PWS cruise three times; Phillips 16 Glacier Cruise is really good and they travel to more glaciers (some of the other boats travel to fout or five glaciers). However, you can sometimes get a really good discount if you book your KF and PWS cruises with the same company.