A Whale of a Time

     Sam and I have been shamefully bad at taking advantage of the amazing area in which we live and I have made it a goal to remedy this flaw. Step one? Go out of our way to do the touristy things that other people travel thousands of miles to come here to do.
     Sam’s old coworker and boss for six years at The Generation’s Network in Provo came to visit Seattle. She was a dear friend of ours and we were excited for the chance to see her and her family. They had already planned to go whale watching while here and it was the perfect opportunity for us to spend the day with them.
     It is currently Grey whale season here in Seattle. The Emerald City is fortunate enough to house many whales during their migration from Baja up to the Bering sea (which is the longest migration that any mammal on earth makes). Grey whales, for those who don’t know, are roughly the size of a school bus, weigh in at about 30-40 tons, and have a 50-70 year life span.
     I honestly didn’t have very high expectations for the whale watching tour, I mean what are the odds of actually seeing these amazing creatures?! I thought that best case scenario, we’d be able to see a couple of whale spouts way off in the distance. I also was highly apprehensive that Addie wouldn’t get to actually see due to not paying attention or looking at the wrong place at the wrong time. Lucky for us, my expectations were totally blown out of the water! *pun intended :)*

     Here we all are right after we boarded the boat (some are phone pics).We were all excited… but I think Addie won the award for most enthused :)

     The weather was really good! You’d definitely want a hat and jacket to be on deck, but it was really quite comfortable out there watching; Addie even wound up taking off her scarf and knit hat. It started pouring the second we docked, so we seriously lucked out. Here’s Addie all bundled up for our first venture outside:

     Seriously, we were incredibly fortunate. Our boat left the dock and straight away we saw a Bald Eagle get in a territory fight with a Canadian Goose. They were dive bombing each other and getting pretty rowdy. In the end, the goose stayed in the water and the bald eagle went back to its perch. I didn’t get any good pics of the spat, but it was cool to watch!
     Then not too far out, we saw these happy sea lions doing what sea lions do best:

     The rest of the trip kept getting better! Seriously, we saw a whale every 2-5 minutes; it was nearly nonstop whale action! Right at the beginning, a HUGE grey came up about 25 feet away from the boat, surfaced to show off his whole body, then rolled. My camera was inside and I didn’t get a picture but it was amazing! We had several extremely good body surfacing shots where we could see the majority of those huge, beautiful animals. I was worried Addie wouldn’t look at the right place at the right time and miss them but she totally nailed it. She saw so many and was seriously excited and would shout “Whale fish! Whale fish!!!”.

     I actually didn’t have our camera out on the whales most of the time because I when I tried to take pics, I wound up missing even better whale action because I was fumbling with my camera or looking through the viewfinder. Sometimes you need to put the lens down and enjoy the moment! Here are a few pics of what we saw. The first pics is mine, the others are internet finds that were representative of the day, though we had some even better views than these:

     Seriously, this was one of the most fun days we have had as a family. I am so grateful that we went and had such an amazing showing of wildlife! It made me fall in love with the Great Northwest all that much more. We totally plan on going again in September for Orca, Minke, and Humpback season.

Here’s Sam with our dear Jenn, it was so good to see her! Simon loved her too :)

     We went through Island Adventure Cruises and highly recommend them! Great boat, very informative, and they really go out of their way to make sure you get the best views of the most whales and wildlife possible.