Whale Watching!

In my previous post, I mentioned that we had to get up early on the second day of our kid-free vacation to go on the next leg of our adventure. Where were we heading? To San Juan Island, Washington, to go (hopefully) whale watching. We drove a couple of hours north of Seattle in our little rental car to the town of Anacortes, where you get on the ferry to go to San Juan. The drive up was so pretty- and so relaxing since there was no one in the back seat needing anything at all! Driving the car onto the ferry was another first for me.

Here we go.

Once onboard we got out of the car and went up to a passenger deck. We went out for a second but it was COLD!

We arrived in the town of Friday Harbor and only an hour or so later we were back out on the water, but this time with San Juan Safaris, an orca watching tour company. There were two "naturalists" on board, along with us and about 30 other people. The captain headed us out to where the whales had been sighted. There are three pods of orcas who live in waters near the San Juan islands half of the year. The naturalists told us more than we ever wanted to know a lot of good information about the whales and the area. And suddenly, there they were! Some big dorsal fins popping up.

I get a closer look at Chad with the binoculars.

For quite a while, we watched the orcas in a resting pattern, just moving slowly along and coming up for air. Beautiful, but not very exciting.

After a while, some of the boats from other tour companies started heading back in- they had left an hour earlier than us. I was really tired from accidentally waking up at 4 AM, so I went inside the cabin to sit down. Fortunately, I could still see the whales from my seat, because then they got really active!

Jumping out of the water and breaching. Click on the picture to enlarge.

"Hey guys! Let's all do it!"

"Do you think the goofy humans are still there?"

"I don't know, let's pop our heads up and see."

It was so beautiful. You all know I love going to Sea World (I kept that to myself around the naturalists, pretty sure they would have thought that was horrible!) but seeing the orcas in the wild was awesome. Eventually they had had enough of entertaining us and started heading out to their all you can eat salmon buffet. We started heading back to Friday Harbor, seeing harbor seals and bald eagles along the way! (Click the pictures to enlarge.)

The northwestern-most point in the US. Except for Alaska. Or something.

Our lovely ride, the Sea Lion.

Before we went on the boat, Chad said I was acting like I didn't want to be there. I was really trying not to think about it too much. I wanted to see the whales so much, and I knew if we didn't I would be disappointed. Thankfully we saw what we went all those miles to see, and it was as amazing as I hoped, and was a highlight of the trip. More about our Seattle vacation, and maybe something about those cute kids of mine, coming soon!