Ladies, you must see Thanckney's wonderful pix above this post.. several sets of pix! They are funny, beautiful, magnificent, along the way. Oh, yes....they certainly are wonderful, funny (love the bears!), beautiful and magnificent!! Thanks for the ping, Dolly.
I love Alaska! Wouldn't want to live there, I think I would be miserable during the long winter, but I love to visit in the summer. I think you've seen our 2006 Alaska whale photos, Dolly, but others may not have, so I am adding them to this great Alaska thread. Bears are one thing we didn't see, but we did see some magnificent whales and many eagles.
While in Juneau we took a "Land and Sea Photo Safari" tour.
Here are some incredible photos of a pod of humpback whale.

This pod of Humpback are "bubble net feeding".
You can read about this amazing feeding behavior here
And here is a great film clip I found of Humpbacks feeding.

This isn't one of the best photos, but it shows
how close we were to water-level and how close the whales
came to us. I'd say they were less than two or three yards away
and there were at least 10 of them coming up all around our little boat!

Another close-up. We got some great photos of these beautiful giants!

This is my favorite.....the whale tail shot.