Tempest in a Teapot

J had a 4 day weekend over the fourth, so we decided to take a Victoria Clipper Whale Watching trip up to the San Juan Islands. (TIP: if you’re military, call for the discount!! we saved quite a bit on the tickets) Turns out we couldn’t have picked a more beautiful day. It was chilly on the water, but so clear and just beautiful.

The cruise departs from the Pier 70 at the downtown Seattle Waterfront around 7:45am. It’s a LONG day, so we came prepared with snacks and drinks of our own. A three hour cruise up past Whidbey Island and under Deception Point bridge brought us to Friday Harbor.

On the way up, I spotted a couple of Bald Eagles from the deck, which made my day. From Friday Harbor, we headed out to spot “Killer” whales – and found an entire pod off the coast of Lummi Island. They put on quite a show for all the boats in the area: jumping up out of the water, smacking their tails, even spyholing – that’s where a whale pokes his head up and looks around at you! We saw several big older males as well as a mother and a baby. It really was a perfect trip for me, because I could be sitting and enjoying all the sights without over tiring myself.

After seeing the whales, we were able to spend some time on shore in Friday Harbor poking in the cute little shops and getting a bite to eat. Oh, and ice cream, of course. It was quite warm by then. I picked up this lavender body oil there that is just fantastic. It’s supposed to help with stretch marks (says it right on the bottle, must be true!!), so we’ll see. The fragrance is so soothing, I just love it.

The ride home from Friday Harbor was a bit rough for around an hour, which made quite a few of the passengers a little seasick, myself included, but once it smoothed out again I was fine. All in all a great day with wonderful scenery. We definitely want to go back…but probably will drive up and take the ferry over so we can spend the day tooling around on the island. It’s wonderful to live in an area where there’s so much to see and do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under Photos, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.