Day 97 - Tuesday 9/22/2026 - Haines, more bears

Today we slept in and took some time to review yesterday's pictures before heading out to see if we could find bears again.  We drove toward the campground and immediately saw people with cameras, parked in the spot we wanted yesterday, and saw a bear fishing along the other side of the river. 

  

 

Then another bear came out in the same spot across the river. 

The first one came completely across the river to our side and splashed around and fished for salmon for a while (the pics below show the same bear in each but they all look so different from the different angles).  One thing for sure though, it was a BIG bear.

Then eventually wanted to cross the road into the woods very near us.  It was a little bit intimidating seeing that the bear was indicating it wanted to pass by us and go up a trail through the woods! So we spared no time to move out of the way and give it plenty of passing room!  No issues...

We walked back to ER150 to take a break and get some water and a snack but soon saw more bears directly across the river.  It was Lulu again, with her four cubs. 

She was headed toward the bridge so we walked along the river in the same direction to watch her, then a mother with two cubs came out of the woods in front of Lulu

and she (Lulu) called her cubs close and decided to go back upriver.

  

As she turned around, however, another mother and two more cubs came out of the woods on the other side of her.  Wow!

She was obviously distressed, but eventually let the new mother and cubs approach her.  They greeted each other then the other bear and two cubs moved on.  That made 11 bears all together in a small space at the same time!

We watched for a while until Lulu and her four cubs were the only ones still out there, and it started to rain, so we headed back to ER150 for lunch.  I was following Mike but suddenly saw one of the smaller cubs had slipped and got caught in the fast moving river current.  The little cub was heading downstream fast, calling out.  Mom (Lulu) immediately noted what was going on and took off after it to save the day.

She called the other three cubs to follow her and I watched them until they were out of sight.  We hope they all made it safely to the other side without injury.  Today was a 13 bear day!!

We had a late lunch and went back out again, but didn't see any more bears.  It was getting rainier and cooler, so we drove up the road to Chilkoot Lake one last time to see it - it is so beautiful and has become one of our favorite places.

And then headed back to a camp spot along the river road for the night. 

What a day !!

Day 96 - Monday 9/22/2026 - Haines Bears!

We woke up to still more wind in Haines, but the rain was almost gone with just low clouds hanging around.  We wanted to go check out the fish weir and along the river below it to see if there were any bears around.  The salmon are running here and there have been lots of reports of Lulu, a mother bear with four second-year cubs, hanging around the area. It is very rare for a bear to have four cubs at all, but to raise them through their second year is extremely rare.  We wanted to see them in action!

We drove up the river and made it about a mile before we saw people lined up on a bridge with cameras.  We stopped and sure enough, there were four bears (we presume it was Lulu's cubs) hanging out.  One was playing with some kind of big animal bone, and it was lagging behind the others. 

 

They moved on after a few minutes and went into the woods. 

It was so exciting - we figured we were in for an excellent bear viewing day!

We drove to the end of the road past the weir but didn't see anything else, but coming back we crossed the bridge to park and saw more people taking pictures again, and there was a bear directly across from us trying to fish. 

We also noticed that to the left of that bear there were three smaller bears watching it.

They played for a few minutes then went into the woods.  We weren't sure if this was a mother and three cubs or the four cubs (presumably Lulu's) that we had seen earlier.  

We talked to Kirby, the fish and wildlife guy who was busy keeping people and bears apart, and he said that a couple of days ago there were 14 bears in the area around dusk.  We decided to park and wait until later to go out again, but we saw people gathering around the side of the river and yep, it was Lulu and her four cubs - for sure this time.  She got in the water and fished, and the cubs played at fishing and begged for her leftovers. 

They slowly moved down the river toward the bridge, and we followed along from a distance to watch.  When Lulu got to the bridge, people lined up on the bridge to photograph them from above.  But Lulu smelled that there was a single bear down the way and she wanted to go to the other side of the river with her cubs.  Instead of crossing the river she climbed up the side and up onto the bridge!  She was obviously a little bit agitated and kept putting her nose up to smell.

She called her cubs, but only one came up onto the bridge where she did. 

Everyone on the bridge froze and stayed in a tight line, waiting to see what would happen.  The cub got off the bridge and went back down to the river.  Lulu called again, and eventually all four cubs came up and went with her.  It was amazing.

 

 

 

One of the cubs was lagging behind and not paying attention but he was soon corrected by one of his/her siblings!

We watched them on the other side of the river until they disappeared from sight. 

We spotted another mother bear and two small cubs across the river,

then watched a single cinnamon-colored bear splashing, fishing and playing in the water near us. 

We followed this one down the river as he fished and watched.

 

 

We took so many pictures, we could never fit them all here on the blog.  We will try to store some more of them somewhere later for folks to view. 

That's 18 sightings today, 10 individuals if those were indeed Lulu's cubs early on. It was a very exciting and fun day - we are so glad we came back to Haines as a final stop in Alaska.  

We went to check out the Chilkoot Lake Campground (it was closed when we were here before) - it is a gorgeous campground tucked back in a very old spruce forest with some great looking private sites.  It was open now.

We also saw many Bald Eagles in the area and grabbed a shot of this one. 

Then we went back to our camp spot on the side of the road and river from last night.  It was very peaceful with beautiful views out the windows of ER150.

For dinner, we had homemade meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans from our freeze-dried stash.  It was so good!  We were tired and went to bed early and dreamt of bears. 😴🐻🧸