Vancouver {Day Three}

Whale watching.

I'm pumped.

So, I knew we had to find a way to get some whale watching in while we were in the Pacific Northwest. We weren't able to work in into our Seattle schedule, so I looked into doing it from Vancouver and found it is about the same distance out to the places where the whales like to hang. Perfect! I booked us a whale watching tour on an open boat, per the suggestion from Justin's cousin who used to do tours herself.

We chose to use Wild Whales of Vancouver. They leave out of Granville Island, which is an easy spot to get from anywhere in Vancouver. We took the Aquabus over the creek to get to the island and then found a spot to grab a sandwich to take with us, since we would be on the boat all day. I wish I could remember the name of the sandwich place that we got our food from, because they were really good! We should have brought more food with us, though. It all worked out I guess.

Our boat was leaving at 11. We got to the place, got suited up about 30 minutes prior to leaving, and headed out to our boat. On the way out, we got soaked but it was so fun! I have no idea why I thought my hair and makeup should have been done that morning... We traveled through rough waters for awhile, but then once we hit the islands, things calmed down a lot and we were able to eat our yummy sandwiches and even take our suits off a bit and enjoy the sunshine.

All suited up & ready to go!

On the way out... before the choppy waters!

...after!

We traveled two and a half to three hours out from Granville Island before we got to where the whales were. They had been moving away from us the entire journey out there so we had to chase them down essentially. We first saw a little group of 5-7 whales, including two babies. They swam together along the coast of the islands and even did a little jumping and splashing. It was amazing. As we followed them along, we heard that there were other whales from the same pod that were further down the coast. We followed along until we got to where they were all meeting, and there were just whales everywhere. It was beautiful to watch them swim along. Our tour guide, who was great, was very excited about all of the activity. She said there were whales from two different pods in the big group and that she hadn't seen some of them for over a year.

So there are a few whales in front of the rock, two different little dorsal fins. Look close!

This one I zoomed in on. You can see one whale jumping and another 

one or two behind it on the left, dorsal fins coming out of the water.

There are regulations on whale watching - distances to keep and length of time you can stay - so after our hour of watching was up, we headed back towards Vancouver. It was going to be a pretty long ride back as well. We saw some bald eagles, a few more harbour seals, and one or two harbour porpoises, but they were more challenging to see. We hit some rain on the way back which made it a little more uncomfortable, but everything else about the trip was just amazing!

When we got back, we knew we needed to head straight back to the hotel to change clothes. We were still soaked from the trip out and the rain on the way back {suits are not waterproof} so that's what we did. We decided to make a stop in the hot tub before cleaning up for dinner. We ate another late dinner at a seafood restaurant in Yaletown, which had tons of food options.

Oh, and I got my cream puff!

What an amazing day!!