Alaska Recap Three: The Animals / by Dave Hileman

Stars of the trip have to be the grizzly bears. We saw 33 over the whole trip most of them in the three big parks, Lake Clark, Katmai and Denali. Several of them were quite close and ranged from a six month old cub to 1100 pound mature males. We saw them catching salmon and failing to do so, chasing a wolf, playing with each other and eating grasses and berries.

Among the other animals we saw were big horn sheep, mountain goats and dall sheep, scores of caribou, about 18 moose, one wolf, two coyotes, bison, mule deer, white tail deer, a large porcupine, elk, several black bear, dozens of sea otters, humpback whales, two pods of orcas, sea lions, stellar sea lions, marmot, ground squirrels, spotted seals, harbor seals, a fin whale and lots of pronghorns.

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