We were at the Thousand Trails in La Conner, Washington this past week. It's a nice park, but we didn't have an internet connection on our mifi device.
La Conner is a nice little seaside town about 70 miles north of Seattle and 30 miles from Bellingham.
We drove over the bridge at Deception Pass to visit Whidbey Island. It was a cloudy day so our pictures did not come out quite as good as we hoped. There were some magnificent views.
Friday, we took a 6 hour whale watching cruise through the San Juan Islands. We were so lucky it was a beautiful, sunny day.
One of the first things we saw on our way out was this American Bald Eagle perched on a branch posing for all of our pictures.
The salmon are running now and fishermen are busy catching them. We were lucky enough to get a glimpse of these two boats fishing. A net is thrown out and the two men perch at the top give a signal for the boats to come together to catch the fish in the net.
We passed this lighthouse as we came out of the San Juan Islands into the open sea.
However, we were lucky enough to have a transient pod in the area. There were 4 other boats in the area. We basically stayed in a circle floating around in the area watching for those dorsal fins to appear. Our guide told us that each whale has unique markings on their dorsal fin like our fingerprints. By examining the dorsal fin, they can tell you the name of the whale in the resident pods.
None of the whales jumped out of the water, but it was fun to watch the family. It appeared to be a female, male and baby whales swimming together.
We probably spent about 45 minutes watching the pod before we had to leave to make our scheduled return time.
We were also taken to a little island where Stellar sea lions have been staying. These are the largest of the eared seals. There were quite a few of them on the island. Even the guide remarked that she had not seen so many of them at one time here.
That is a great whale photo! So neat you got to see some!!
ReplyDelete