Land of Whales, Bears, and Eagles

Is anyone out there getting tired of hearing about all the whales? I hope not.

I went out to guide again today, which was fabulous. The forecast was calling for 80 and sunny, so I knew it was going to be a great day to spend on the water. I even charged up the camera battery so I would be ready (and then forgot the camera in the car, oops!)

Regardless, we started off with a great sunny morning. I had 4 guests with me, who were all super fun, and excited about the day to come. Right away from when we launched the kayaks and started paddling east from the Chicken Ranch we saw whales, and they were in really close to shore! One of my guests, Jordie, joked that paddling along this way was like running the "whale gauntlet". We ended up having to stop and wait quite often, because the whales were so close to shore that we couldn't get around them.

We finally got through, saw a bunch of eagles at "Eagle Rock" and then headed over to Pt. Adolphus proper to see what might be going on. The whales were pretty quiet during lunch, but we got back on the water and the crew decided at random to paddle back west.

Just as we flipped our boats around to start paddling back west the whales started going nuts! There was a pod of about 6-10 of them traveling west, so we stayed close to the shore and just waited. They were all diving and circling for something and then out of nowhere one of the whales came rocketing out of the water for a full breech! This was then followed by 5 or 6 more full breeches by the other whales and lots of pectoral fin slapping and fluke slapping. The rest of the crew got great pictures (I just enjoyed the show).

When the whales calmed down (about 40 minutes later) we headed back toward the pick up spot. On the way there the "whale gauntlet" was back in full swing, and just when we got past all the whales and I thought I had found a beach to land on, there was a brown bear hanging out on the shore munching on the tide line. Another great photo op. After the bear we paddled a bit more west to give him his space and the next good stretch of beach revealed 2 bald eagles and a juvinile sitting on a piece of drift wood. We floated right past them. Go figure, camera is still in the car. ah!

I guess this means that I'll have to start gluing my camera to the back of my hand on trip days. :)