Whale Breath

Sorry for being so absent lately. I've been really busy between work and Joe's parents visiting. Luckily the weather has turned around a bit and we've been able to get outside and actually do some things. We've been hiking, biking, blueberry picking, and yesterday we took Joe's mom out whale watching. We went back in the spring when she came to visit, but we were a bit to early for the whales, so the company gave her a voucher to come back again.

This time we got on a newer, larger boat (still for free, since we work here! yay!). And we saw three whales. Two of them hung out by the boat for quite a while, providing us with some good photo ops. I learned a surprising amount about whales, and was pretty astounded at having actually seen them up close. We got so close we could hear them blowing air out of their blowholes and even smell their breath (a pretty unpleasant odor). The two humpbacks that hung around the boat were named Viper and Flyer. Apparently the whale research organization out here was the first group to discover that the markings on their tails are all unique and allow us to identify, name, and track the whales. It's really great how there's so much talk of environmental alliances out here. There's such an abundance of wildlife and a lack of pollution. I'm really just lucky to be out here, able to experience all of it...

OK, sentimentality aside, here are some pictures of the whales and the sunset on the return boat ride (we were 28 miles off shore and traveled at 30mph! woo)