A Whale of a Time

Since moving to New England I have wanted to go on a Whale Watch. Living in the dessert it was never even an option, so living so close to the ocean I wanted to experience all cool things ocean related. It has always seemed a bit expensive to go, but earlier this year I bought 1/2 off tickets on BuyWithMe.com and since they expire in a week, we decided we should probably use them. We traveled to Glouster, pronounced gloss-ta, to leave on our boat.

For anyone thinking of doing this, I would say don't do it with a 19 month old child, as it is a 2 hour ride out to the whale and a 2 hour ride back. This leaves plenty of time (4 plus hours) to worry that your small child will fall over board, throw his glasses into the ocean, get eaten by whales, etc. But alas, none of the above mention occurred during our trip. Berke did very well and managed to stay on board the ship the entire time.

On our way out to where the whales were feeding we saw about 20 dolphins was was fun, but I got no pictures. We saw about 20-25 humpback whales and 8 minky whales. We watched the whales for about in hour in complete awe of these beautiful creatures. I took over 500 pictures and tried to find some of the best to put on the blog.

This is a humpback whale with its mouth open going down for a feeding.

I was amazed every time the would go under and flip their flukes to make a big splash; what a glorious sight!

We watched whales swim, jump, and eat. Toward the end there was a calm for about 5 minutes and the captain cut the engines and two humpbacks appeared right beside the boat. The whale below was so close that the water it was spraying out of its blow hole actually got me wet. If you zoom in on this picture you can actually see the whales eyes. These two big guys were enjoying some "human watching" I suppose. They hung out just giving us the show of our lives for about 10 minutes before swimming away.

Here are the two whales; I could not believe how close they were, it was unreal. These creatures are so beautiful.

We had an amazing time; the long boat ride was well worth it for the whales we were able to see.
This is really an activity worth doing at least once in your lifetime.