My intention with today’s blog post is to make it easy peasy. Because not much about this trip has been that way. 

Our Best Pics of Alaska Highway Wildlife in the Yukon and Beyond

Soon I will spill the gory details about other day-to-day challenges we’ve encountered but for now I hope you enjoy some of the best pics of Alaska Highway wildlife that we’ve captured with our iPhone.

Meet Mama Grizzly and Her Cubs

I never expected to be this close to a Mama Grizzly and her adorable cubs. But when we saw this litter leisurely chomping on roadside greens, we joined other travelers who stopped to admire their beauty.

Thankfully everyone respectfully watched from a distance and we didn’t have to endure witnessing any stupid selfie tricks like they do in the national parks.

Mama B and her grizzly litter seemed oblivious to the paparazzi. All three simply went on checking out the salad bar. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “fur babies,” don’t you think?

The family walked around my side of the truck. Lucky me! I had my window closed at first, until Jim swore that it would be OK for me to open it a little for better photos. 

When I did, this adorable cub sauntered past, already getting his grizzly walk going on. I so wanted to take Wyatt’s Furminator brush to this big puppy!

Mama strolled past us, but one of her cubs went off into the weeds and found plastic trash to munch on. Can you see it in his mouth? At that moment, I hated being part of the human race that invented cheap plastic trash. Baby bear crunched on the discarded water bottle a few times but quickly spit it out. The heartbreaking scene of a baby grizzly eating a plastic bottle has made me more dedicated than ever to eliminating “disposable” plastic products from the planet.

After a minute or two, the family went on their way, with one of the cubs taking time to sun himself in the roadway. He leaned forward into an adorable downward dog pose on the center line, while drivers slowed down to watch. Wish I had snapped a photo of that move!

A few days before that close encounter, this black bear was seen just before we had our Alaska or Bust moment. Now I totally see the difference between a grizzly and a black or brown bear. Grizzlies are enormous, much larger than the others. And their sauntering gait is unmistakable.

Nearly every day we have seen bald eagles. So many that we stopped counting. Another common critter up here is the beaver. We couldn’t help but smile at this hard working beaver colony on the Yukon River. They greeted us each morning in the spot where we stayed south of Whitehorse.

RVers who have been to Alaska tell us that they had more wildlife encounters south of the border in Canada. Now we know why. Seems like every day we experience another wildlife sighting, so I guess there’s one big benefit of spending so much time outside of Alaska instead of actually in it.

Being up here forces you to walk a fine line between wanting to experience animals in the wild, and hoping you never make them angry by your presence.