Q: Hi Bob—I would like to get some good close-up photos of your giant brown bears! How would I go about doing this? —Daniel

A: Daniel, get ready for some big bears. Alaskan brown bears can top 1,400 pounds among males. You won’t see these bears along the roads of Alaska, the way you might see moose or other wildlife. One possible exception: in Denali, you might have some casual sightings, but likely from far away. To get up close you have two solid options:

• Take a tour. Most tours are daylong outings, either by boat or plane, to see the bears in their habitats and doing what they do best in the summer months—fishing for salmon or digging for clams. (In these settings, the bears are also used to, and almost blasé about, human audiences, and most tour groups tend to be pretty small, too.) The only catch? These tours can be pricey, ranging from $200 to nearly $700 per person. A great one: Bald Mountain Air Tours' trip to Katmai National Park.

• Stay Where the Bears Are. A few lodges put you up close to where the bears live, giving you more flexibility in how you observe them (evening, for instance, can be the best time). One of my favorite places for this is Redoubt Bay Lodge, a 50-minute floatplane ride from Anchorage, which has so many bears, and up close, that you might get splashed by them.

For a look at a variety of bear-magnet tours, check out Alaska.org’s listing of Bear-Watching Excursions.