Sun Aug 2, 2026
Hi Gang! The word of the day is BEARS!!!!! Yes, we finally saw bears! 7 to be exact! But I guess when you pay to go on a bear watching trip, you’d hope to see bears and we did. And we also saw whales since it was a combined bear and whale watch tour.
But to back up a bit (was just so excited about seeing bears!) we were docked in the port of Icy Strait Point which is tied in with the town of Hoonah, Alaska. The indigenous Tlinget Tribe (pronounced Klinket) have lived here for thousands of years and own this port so all proceeds stay local.
There are more brown bears here than humans (so probably why we saw so many)! Our tour started early at 7:30 AM and we drove out into the wilderness to a trail that looks over a creek where the salmon are plentiful. Thus why it attracts so many bears.
About 10:00 AM we drove back and boarded a boat to go whale watching. We got really lucky and saw three Orca whales (killer whales that look like Shamu). They said it was two adults and a baby and they were teaching the baby how to hunt. They kept trying to get this poor sea otter but he kept evading them!
We then went to a different area and saw several humpback whales. What a day of outdoor adventure and wildlife. I’ll again let the pictures do the talking.
In full disclosure, the up close bear pics I posted were ones we saw, but a guy on our tour had a much better camera than me and shared them with me. The pictures are stunning and we were really close to them! I’ll do another update later tonight.
