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Moose are of course not exclusive to Alaska, but they are a well known part of the landscape and somehow a visit doesn’t seem complete without a few moose sightings. Although I missed photographing the mama moose and her calves in Anchorage, I had a few more chances in the following days.

Entering Denali Park the afternoon before our bus trip we encountered two calves grazing at the intersection. 

We hope the mom was around somewhere. The calves seemed pretty calm so she may have been in the bushes.

On our way back from Denali we finally saw the classic moose-in-a-pond shot. It hung around for a while, too. Here it is in profile:

And the head-on look when it decided to check US out:

These are all female adult moose (cows). We saw others I didn’t photograph, also female. No guys! Until finally, when we were on the Denali Highway going east, we saw a magnificent bull moose with a serious rack of antlers.

Of course I didn’t get my camera out in time and he was very skittish at the sight of the car, even though we stopped a ways away. We caught him loping away through the brush and I tried to shoot a picture:

Our Denali bus driver told us about “spruce moose,” which is what they call sightings of spruce trees that are mistaken for moose. This is a different type: a bull moose running away, bisected by a spruce. If you look really closely you can see antlers on either side of the spruce.

Luckily, the professional photographer in our group got some excellent photos of him, both in the pond and running away.