Whale Watching!!

I had THE most amazing experience yesterday. I couldn't believe how amazing and awesome it was going to be and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I would have given up my next six meals to do this - I would have gone and bought a loaf of bread and sustained myself on that for the next couple of days if I had to. There is no way in the land I would have missed this for anything (and I am going on and on about this, because there were people who didn't go with us when offered the opportunity). I went WHALE WATCHING!

The company we went through has two trips they offer a day. They only send out a boat if there are at least twenty people. We had exactly that! The ship before us, in the morning had 74!! I am so glad we had the less crowded boat. We could move around from side to side without much problem. Had there been as many as before, it would have been impossible to go from one side to the other. As it stood, if there was a whale on one side, we could all pretty much go to that side, because there were three levels to be on. And the day was absolutely perfect. There was a bit of fog for the first part of the journey, then it was absolutely perfect. Pristine smooth water, sunshine, gorgeous gorgeous day.

We drove (don't know what it's called, because we didn't sail) for about an hour outside San Juan Island. Then we slowed down (we saw a couple of dolphins right before we got to where we were going). Then all the sudden, you see it. The noises coming out of me were crazy - I was shrieking and oooo'ing and ahhh'ing and saying, "oh my god - oh my god". But, the same noises were coming out of everyone else!! We saw about twenty to thirty different whales. They travel in family groups. We saw one that was three brothers, ages 21, 19 and 9. My favorite group was a grandmother, Princess Angeline and her two daughters - then all three had babies that were under a year old!!! It was the most precious thing ever to see - all six of them swimming next to each other - the larger mothers and their much smaller babies. It was so amazing and awe inspiring!!

These creatures live in a world where they weren't bothered by us (in fact, one came up so close to us, then SWAM UNDER OUR BOAT!!) I told Roxann (my boss who I was with) that it was like seeing just a small glimpse of God seeing these amazing creatures - so majestic. They are very peaceful (other than to the fish they eat, but they do that to survive). They are VERY family oriented, they stay with their mothers all their lives. They mourn; the marine biologist told a story of how one family actually kept their still born baby afloat for two weeks trying to keep this poor dead baby to the surface so it could breathe.

There was one sad thing about this, though!!! MY CAMERA BATTERY DIED. So when we were the closest, I couldn't get any good pictures. So, I have to deal with the ones I got and most of them aren't very good - kind of blurry and look far away. Oh well, I still have the images in my brain!!