Alaska full of opportunities to view wildlife

DENALI NATIONAL PARK, Alaska — It was near the end of a six-hour bus tour of Denali National Park that we got a good, long look at a bear eating his way through a field of berries.

Elsewhere in Alaska, my husband, two sons and I had watched whales spouting near Juneau, eagles along the Chilkat River, and waterways in Ketchikan and Skagway so full of salmon they could barely move.

But we'd headed to Denali knowing that the park's 9,400 square miles are home to just 350 brown bears. We hoped to see them, but we were prepared for the possibility that we might not.

And therein lies an important point to keep in mind if you're planning a trip to Alaska this summer. There are no guarantees you'll see wildlife, but you can improve your chances if you're patient and if you put yourself in the right place at the right time.

"People go to Alaska to see wildlife for a reason, but you see it in many ways and in many circumstances," said Holland America Line spokesman Erik Elvejord. "Don't expect a line-up of bears when you hit the pier, or pods of whales everywhere the ship goes.

If you're cruising to Alaska between May and September, you're probably starting to weigh tour options now. "Talk to the shore excursion manager about your expectations so they can help out," Elvejord said. "They won't promise anything they can't deliver, but they have to take all the tours, so they know what happens on them."

The Sea Otter Quest from the town of Sitka is one of the tours recommended by Robert Blythman, director of tour operations for Carnival Cruise Lines. "It's a 100 percent guarantee that you'll see the otters," he said.

Whales are also relatively easy for summer visitors to spot. "The time the cruise ships are up there is when humpbacks and orcas are feeding, so there's a good chance you'll see them," Blythman said.

Whales are so plentiful that some excursions come with money-back guarantees, like the Whale Watching and Wildlife Quest in Auke Bay, offered through Holland America Line.

On a whale-watch tour near Juneau, booked through our Royal Caribbean cruise, we saw so many humpbacks that we lost count. They spouted, surfaced and dove all around our boat, their black Y-shaped tails at a perfect 90-degree angle as they went down.

In contrast, Blythman said, "bears are more hit or miss."

As if to underscore that very point, an excursion we took from the port of Icy Strait Point was called a "bear search" tour rather than a "bear watch." The tour description clearly states that wildlife "sightings cannot be guaranteed." As it turned out, we did see bears, so we felt we'd gotten our money's worth.