One of our favorite trips for wildlife viewing was Alaska. We spent about three weeks traveling around the state, seeing as much as we could. To give you an idea of our itinerary:

Day 2 - 7 - Board our boat, the Sheltered Seas, for a five day cruise through the Inside Passage. We started in Ketchikan and stopped in the Misty Fjords, the Wrangell Narrows and Petersburg, Frederick Sound and the Tracy Arm and ended in Juneau.

Our cruise had about 45 people aboard. We cruised around all day, eating most meals aboard and then sleeping in hotels each night. The main benefit of such a small boat is we can go in very close to the glaciers and other sights, visit places the big ships can't go and we're cruising during the day instead of spending it in port. We can stop and spend as much time as desired when we see animals, like big pods of whales.

Day 9 - 10 - Cruise through Prince William Sound, spend the night in Valdez. Hard to believe that there was such an immense oil spill here a few years ago. The naturalist on the boat says that they can still see the impact and that all of the animal life is not back to normal yet, but to the untrained eye, it is very beautiful and unspoiled. Back to Anchorage.

Day 11 - 14 - Rented a car and drove to Denali National Park. Spent the days exploring the park, hiking and took the all day bus tour into the heart of the park. Made stops at a Musk Ox farm and a Wolf Safari, among other things, on the trip to the park. Back to Anchorage.

Day 15 - 18 - Flew out to the Pribilof Islands to spend a few days on St. Paul Island in the middle of the "Mighty" Bering Sea. The island is a summer nesting home to many species of birds. We saw Puffins, Auklets, Murres, etc. The fur seals also come to the island for a few months to have their pups. There are also many arctic fox on the island. Back to Anchorage.

Day 18 - 19 - Flew to King Salmon and spent the night. Early the next morning, we took a float plane on a short hop to Katmai National Park, which is famous for the grizzly bears hanging out in the river catching salmon as the come up the river to spawn. We were a little too early for the salmon run, but saw a couple of bears anyway. We had a bit of an adventure getting back to Anchorage. The winds had picked up and the lake where we landed was too choppy to take off, so we had to run across the island to the lake on the other side to catch the last flight back. The plane was much smaller than our original plane and the flight was very bumpy. We had to take off from the choppy surface of the lake into 50 mile an hour winds. I thought it was exciting, but since Alex gets a bit motion sick, he didn't enjoy it nearly as much. Back to Anchorage before heading back home.