Dream come true :)

Saturday Sept. 17/11 marks one of the coolest days of my life! Since I was a little girl I have always wanted to go whale watching. Seeing an animal of that size in the wild is just so incredible. When we moved to the island I was one step closer to that dream, but then I found out it costs $100 per person to go. So that would have to go on the back burner for a time. Then one day Brad came home from work and told me that the dentist was going to pay for the whole office to go AND their families! I was SO excited! This day could not come fast enough. We left bright and early as it is a 3 hour drive up to Telegraph Cove. I had feared that it was going to rain on us but the skys stayed dry for the whole day.

Just heading out to find the whales was a thrill. It is such a beautiful part of the country, like nothing I have seen before. I am pretty sure Brad and I were more excited then the kids :)

I will never forget the feeling of seeing a whale for the first time. When I heard people saying that they saw one my heart skipped. Then a black fin started to rise from the water. Coolest thing ever!

There was a whole family of them, including a baby! I guess these are resident whales named A-30 pod. The group consists of 2 males. They are the ones with the big dorsal fins.

When we first saw them they were all traveling in one group. Then they spread out and started to feed. So we stopped the boat and the captain put in a micro phone and we got to listen to them talk to each other. I posted a video at the bottom of the blog of them chatting. So cool!

Brecken laying on the boat enjoying the view.

Beautiful girl :)

Huxley LOVED it! He kept saying "Whale, whale go?"

This big guy was the coolest. He swam right up to the boat, I mean RIGHT up to it!

He then passed right under it. It was so cool to see him right below me underwater and go under the boat. Almost close enough to touch it. The sheer size of them just blew me away.

We had a great view. We perched up on top so we could see above all the other people's head and have a clear view all around us.

Tavie spent alot of time with the captain. He gave her a special "job" to spot all the whales and then he would drive the boat to them. She took this very serious and did a great job because we saw lots of whales!

After we watched the Orca's for a while we went on the hunt for Humpbacks. Along the way we came across these little fellas. I think they are Harbour Seals, they kinda smelled bad and didn't really do much.

When we got close to the area where the Humpbacks would be we all started looking around and without warning a Humpback breached right in front of us. No one was camera ready but I will never forget seeing that. Incredible. Then this guy popped up about 20 feet from the boat. I thought I would be prepared for how big it would be. I mean I have seen them on TV before, but to see it in real life was just amazing.

These guys were a little bit harder to photograph. With the Orcas you have the dorsal fin that starts to appear so you can get the camera set. But with the Humpbacks you just all of a sudden hear a huge noise from their blow holes and then they are gone. A few times they would dive deep so you could see their tails.

This one is well known in the area and is identified from its 'lack' of hump.

It had been a long day for Hux and the rocking of the boat finally put him to sleep. He was so tuckered out :)

After the humpbacks we came across these Steller Sea Lions. They were really fun to watch and VERY noisey.

This big boy just sat there and scratched himself the whole time...isn't that typical of most men? :)

Fight! Fight! Fight! They were yelling at each other and started to bite one another.

As if the trip wasn't already amazing, on the way back to Telegraph Cove we came into a huge group of dolphins. I mean HUNDREDS of them! I think they liked us as much as we liked them. They would swim right up to the boat and ride the wake. So cool to watch. I posted a video of the dolphins. The quality isn't the best but if you look closely you can see them jumping all around. It was really hard to get a picture of them because they are SO fast.

It was an amazing day. Even if we would have had to pay it would have been worth every penny. We were supposed to be on the boat for 3 hours but ended up staying out for 4 hours. There was just so much to see. The sight of the whales coming up for air never grew old. Hopefully one day we will be able to do this again.