Whale Watching

It's July 2nd?! Already?! This summer is flying by!

I'm not sure how this happened, June seems to have disappeared completely. I have a few memories but seriously, how do 30 days slip past that fast? 

We spent about 10 days of June in Seattle, Alaska and Victoria, British Colombia vacationing in celebration of the oldest spawn's release from high school. The days leading up to this event are a mass blur of getting things in order and lots of yelling at teenage boys to do chores. Maybe, this is why June seemed so short--I've blocked those days...

I have come to the conclusion that in order to create fond family memories on such a trip, I must make the days leading up to it complete hell for all. This requires a lot of work on my part as well as a certain amount of yelling, hair pulling and slamming of doors. It's only after all of this mayhem that we are able to truly appreciate being on vacation and relaxing completely. I do hope that one day the children will continue this tradition with their own families. Maybe, just maybe, they just might appreciate my "crazy-psycho" moments.

You know what the most amazing thing of our Alaskan cruise was? We were in Sitka, Alaska and went out on a boat to watch sea otters and hoped to see a whale or two. We were not disappointed! The sea otters were precious and we witnessed a baby calling for it's mother while they fished for food, but the best part was seeing the whales. We have never seen anything like it before! 

To see this animal, that weighs more than the boat we are in, swim gracefully through the arctic water was mesmerizing! 

My zoom lens on my camera wasn't quite strong enough to get full details but I think you can see the spray from the blow hole in this picture.

We just stood and stared at two whales as they danced and sprayed happily in the ocean. 

The whole time I was wondering what they were saying to each other. Wondering if it sounded like Dori from Finding Nemo, "Hhhhheeeeellllllooooooo, nnnnniiiicccceeee dddddaaaaaayyyyyy fffffffoooooorrrrr aaaaaaaa ssssswwwwiiiiiiiimmmmm."

These huge ocean dwelling mammals would surface and dive again leaving hardly a ripple, let alone a splash, in their wake.

How can something this big be so stealth?

If you didn't watch closely you might miss them completely. Sometimes I thought I might be hallucinating since they seemed to appear out of nowhere and then disappear below the surface with out a trace.

Every now and then, you might catch a spray of water before the top of the whale's body would appear. The one time they breached completely, my battery on my camera had gone dead and I was desperately trying to switch it out and totally missed even viewing the whole event.

Grrrrrrrr.

We could have watched the whales all day. It was like sitting by a campfire, completely hypnotizing.

It's been HOT since we came back to reality in Texas. Like 100 degree heat hot. It's a bit of a shock to be wearing scarves and jackets for 10 days then in a matter of hours want to strip naked and sit in a pool of ice water. I feel like if I'm this hot, I should, at the very least, be able to dip my toes in the warm water of the Caribbean as it laps the white sands of it's shore...