18 whale watching

 Well, I can officially cross whale watching off the list! Whale watching made it to the list when John, the Gantons, and I went to the Crab Pot in Seattle. We had a two hour wait until we got our table so we toured around the Pier. Courtney and I came across those "what to do in this state" brochures and found one about whale watching. So, after looking through the brochure, we were sold -- we made the pact that day, that we'd go whale watching together.
 So, after deciding that we needed to go before the rain starts, we booked our tickets for this past Saturday. How did we choose our boat? We spontaneously googled "whale watching tours in WA" and came across quite a few. From there, we strictly judged the websites. We decided that the best tour for us, would be one with a very organized website and we found that at orcawhales.com
 The day started by waking up at 4:30 (or at least that's when my alarm went off). I've been having these weird dreams that seem so real. In my dream, John is home and he tells me to go back to sleep and that he'll walk Buttons for me so that I can sleep some more. This is a weird dream to me because it's very rare that John actually walks Buttons. Since I haven't had a job since we've been out here, I've taken on the responsibility of walking her on a daily basis (save the few Sundays that he beat me in getting ready for church). So, really, I woke up at 5:00 in a frantic rush to get ready (including walking Buttons) by 5:30.
 On our drive there, we were able to see some pretty wonderful things -- we few outlet malls, some farms, a tractor thing that I could drive underneath, and some beautiful landscape --mountains, fog, & sunrise. We finally reached our boat and checked in and grabbed some breakfast. On our boat, we were able to sit in a really wonderful spot. Our boat had two levels.  Courtney and I decided to sit on the top level at the very front of the boat so that we could move fast either to the left or the right depending on where the whales would be to get a great view.
 We did not see any whales for the first two hours of our trip and we were getting a little anxious that we weren't going to see anything when Captain Carl announced that another boat had just spotted some whales in US waters (by this time we were in Canadian waters). So, we turned around to head back to the great US, when we found our own in Canadian waters!. It was AMAZING to see how these creatures behave and interact with one another. After viewing these whales for about a half an hour, we continued to the US to see some more. We met up with the whales in the US and had an even greater show (these whales were extremely playful) than we had in Canada. As an added bonus, we were able to see some harbor seals, a bald eagle, and porpoises.
 Overall, it was a great day. Courtney and I had a great time watching all of the wildlife. On the ride home, we got stuck in some dreaded I-5 traffic. At one point, we moved 5 miles in one hour! Although at the time, I was extremely frustrated, I wouldn't have traded the day nor the company for anything. So, thanks Court for coming whale watching! I had a blast!.

Here are some pictures from our whale watch!

Our boat

                                       

These dorsal fins can easily get up to 5 or more feet

This whale is breaching the water.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures because it has so much going on. 

Mt. Baker

Me and Courtney on our boat. Mt Baker is in the distance.