Brown bears - Halo Bay, Katmai National Park, Alaska

After fishing for quite some time, she both fed her cub and nursed. Was she just so hungry that she needed to eat in order to keep nursing her cub? Was she really a mean Momma or was this the effect of a late and poor salmon run? Her cub was very small. I hope the rest of the season was bountiful and they both had plenty to eat; our guides felt that the cub had little hope of surviving the winter.

Also notice the two brown bears in the top left. We had 8-10 bears around us at all times.

These shots were taken in August 2010 over a family holiday in Alaska. After seeing bears in Denali National Park and at a few stops along the parks road from Denali down to Anchorage, we thought - wow, it can't better than this. We were VERY wrong! We stayed in Homer for only three nights and two days and they were the most consistently sunny and beautiful days of our trip. We had arranged a flight-seeing trip out to Katmai National Park (from Homer) where we landed on the beach and then hiked in to the river deltas where brown bears were hunting for salmon. The biggest precaution was that we weren't allowed to pack salmon sandwiches so the bears wouldn't be interested in us. And, they weren't. We never felt threatened or unsafe and we could have watched them for days. Instead, we had only a few hours with them.

For more information: Brown bear, K-Bay Air, Land's End Resort, Boardwalk Bakery