We were in Alaska in August 2018, and we saw plenty of whales from the ship and on our whale watching excursion.
We also saw a mama bear and her cubs at Mendenhall Glacier. We were walking around an area where salmon were plentiful, and the park rangers asked us to wait a moment before going any further. It turned out mama and her cubs were about to cross the street, 10 feet in front of us. The rangers formed a wall between us and the bears. Not because of us, but because other people kept trying to walk past them!! Who thinks it is a good idea to approach a mama bear and her cubs????
Anyway, this was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. These are zoomed-in photos from my phone. We were very close, but not quite as close as it appears. And we were behind a human wall.
We could see some movement in the bushes, where the rangers were pointing. It was hard to see the bear, until she came right up to the fence and peeked out.
Then she started across the street.
One of the cubs was right on her heels.
We had no idea there was a second cub, until s/he came bounding out after mama and sibling.
You can see the 2nd cub joining mama and sibling, and how far we were from them in the video that my son took.