Woah Whales!

It looked like it was going to be a pretty typical day this morning. I got up early, took Sig out for a walk, and then grabbed my paddling gear to head down to the dock.

Every once in a while I get to get out of the office and head out on the water with some guests here in Gustavus to go and do some kayaking in and around Pt. Adolphus. It's a fabulous place to be paddling (see June 23rd), and it means that I get to spend a whole day ignoring my cell phone and email and just enjoy being outside with great people.

Today's trip was very cool for two reasons. First, the family that I had out to day was from Wenham, MA! (The tiny town in MA where Gordon College is). They even brought their "Nick's Roastbeef" sticker to Gustavus! We had a great time out on the water talking about all our favorite Wenham places.

The best part of the day though came after lunch. We had stopped out in the middle of the stright to eat and watch some feeding whales that were a bit off from us, but they all dove down deep so we had turned our backs. Then out of nowhere we heard this very loud blow right next to the boat and we all went runnng over to see a whale surface no more than 40 feet off our boat. The captain and I knew that the pod was bigger than one whale so we kept the engines off so that we wouldn't risk running into any of the other ones and then the rest of the pod surfaced, probaby between 8-12 whales, that were close enough that if I had lept off of the boat I could have landed on their backs. Then as quickly as they appeared, they also all took a deep dive and headed back down into the deeps to find fish.

This was definately the coolest thing I've seen all summer, hands down.