Whales!!

One thing Chris and I have been excited to do since we moved to Washington, is go on a whale watching tour.  We have both seen whales in captivity before, but never in the wild.  And when Meemaw and Uncle Justin were visiting, we had the perfect excuse to finally go on a tour.  And since Meemaw loves whales (she says they are her spirit animal), she was probably even more excited for the tour than anyone!

The day we went started out super chilly, drizzly, and foggy.  We were worried we wouldn't be able to see that far and spot any whales.  Plus, the water was really choppy.  I'm happy to report that even though some other guests on the tour got seasick, no one in our personal party did (Haha... and since my mother is the queen of getting seasick, I was worried I might have inherited her "gift" and have gotten seasick myself.  But I survived:).  But, once we got a little further out to sea, the water calmed down, the rain stopped, the fog cleared, and the sun even made a few appearances.  It turned out to be a beautiful day!  And... we saw whales!!  Our captain got word of a Humpback whale sighting near Port Angeles, WA, so we headed out that way.  Miss Humpback was amazing!  We got wonderful views of her tail slapping the water as she dove deep for food, and of her spout when she came up for air again.  It sounds pretty basic, but it really was a neat, fun, magical moment to see this great creature out in the wild.  We thought we were lucky enough to see this Humpback (Afterall, whales are wild animals and we can't control their movements, so there was a chance we would not have seen any whales), but after viewing her for a while, we also spotted some Orcas/Killer Whales.  We weren't sure how many were in the pod at first, but after viewing them for a while we think there were about six or seven of them.  We all were so excited!  It was such an epic day!

Before we even got on the boat, Mitchell was on the lookout for any whales.

Getting ready to embark on our tour.  See how excited we are... Haha, actually, at this point we were just focused on not being so cold.  It was a chilly chilly morning.  Luckily, it warmed up later.

Enjoying some blueberry crumble cake, coffee, and hot chocolate on our way to spot some whales.  Haha, and I love Mitchell's fake smile in this picture... he inherited that gem of a look from his dad:)

Meemaw enjoying the views from the boat.

Check out those beautiful mountains, standing tall above the clouds.  That is one thing great about Washington... we have the ocean and the mountains.

Mitchell LOVED walking around on the boat.  In fact, it was hard to get him to go back inside.

He was seriously loving it.  He just may grow up to be a captain of a ship one day.

There she blows!!  Our lovely Humpback made her appearance, coming up for some air.  Can you spot her spouting water?  It's kind of hard to see against all the mist/clouds in the background... But in the center of this picture is the whale's water spout.  It was so cool!

And here is our not-so-little lady getting ready to dive to eat.  She's getting ready to flip her tail out of the water.

Money shot of the tail.

Final view of the tail... we loved her:)

Mitchell got to sit right next to Captain Rob!  Captain Rob even let Mitchell hold a toy Humpback whale, to let him see what we were searching for.  He loved it.

Chris and Mitchell on the lookout for some Killer Whales.

I spy a water spout from an Orca.

Twinsies!  Coming up to breath, spouting water, and just going for an easy morning stroll:)

Momma and her baby.  We did learn that Killer Whales really like a matriarch system.  Something very unique to them is how much they value their grandmother (most other species don't let females, past childbearing years. stick around too often).  In fact, when it comes to feeding, they let the grandmother eat first, then any mothers and their babies, and then the males eat last.  Haha, Meemaw really connected to their way of life:) 

Searching for Moby-Dick.

Windblown family photo.  Well, minus Duncan, who slept almost the whole tour.  The rocking of the boat really kept him asleep.

Besides the Humpback and Killer whales, we also saw a bunch of Puffins, and this cute sea lion (He was just chilling on this buoy).

And of course, after the tour, we couldn't leave town without letting Mitchell do his favorite thing... throw some rocks in the water.