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Published: July 25th 2021
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How do we top the past few days? Well, we pull into Windham Inlet and have a visual feast of whales and sea lions.
Ken once again chose the bushwhack and I again, chose to avoid it at all costs. I have decided that thrashing through the forest, up steep inclines and sliding down steep slopes is not my thing. I love hiking, with defined trails, but plowing over/under logs, brush and other forestry things is not so fun for me.
My morning was spent on a kayak, and the sea lions put on a show. I had a great paddle partner in Lesle (from Wash DC).and we along with 8 others loved the serenity of the water. We were out for about 2 hours and had sea lions on all sides of us, they were curious about us, along with wrestling with salmon and just sliding through the water. We hung for a bit longer than normal, but they were so fun to watch we didn’t want to leave.
Finally, we had to get back to the ship, and when we were about 100 yards away, we could see a whale slapping his tail over and over.
We all turned on the jets to get closer for a better look. It was right next to the ship, so those on board were getting a true show. As we got closer, he was still flapping but then started to breach, and did about 3 leaps into the air, which was awesome. We all just sat in our kayaks and watched until he wore himself out and took a rest and I mean a literal rest. He stayed close to the surface but did not move for the next hour. We got back on the ship, and everyone was buzzing about the 30 minutes of whale fun that we all experienced.
Ken’s bushwhack trip was a bit less successful. While he did get to channel his inner child of lots of climbing over downed logs, blazing through the forest and up some significant hills. It was not as fun as the other bushwhack group who reported they found a river, a waterfall and some beautiful scenery.
Lunch was especially yummy today with bison chili, vegi chili and jalapeno cornbread muffins and the ever-present sweet treat, today being gooey chewy brownies. After which we were really ready for
a nap!
The afternoon was a great skiff ride, our first of the week. We buzzed over where we found the sea lions in our kayaks and sure enough, there were still there! The funniest was where we were slowly motoring and a sea lion popped up on his back immediately in front of us. He barrel-rolled around and saw us and had the most shocked look on his face, like WTF??? Who is this??? And immediately dived underneath. We all had a good laugh at the poor guy’s expense.
After deciding the sea lions were no longer interested in us, we started over to an island to see what interesting things we could see. When we were almost there, the radios buzzed that the other skiff had a whale in site…and we voted to abandon the island and head to the whale area. We got there in time to see his back and some diving, but then he disappeared. We hung for a bit, and then decided to have 3 minutes of silence to enjoy the beautiful views and the lapping waves against the skiff.
It was time to go back to the ship, where we
relaxed in the beautiful sunshine on the top deck and just continued to be enamored with the scenery. As we were slowly leaving the inlet, the coup of the week…Orcas!!! No one was expecting Orcas and yet, there they were! About 6 spread out across a wide swath of water and we enjoyed, breaching, a baby breaching, lots of tail action and just watching the incredible views with awesome fish (orcas are technically dolphins).
Dinner was as always enjoyable with great halibut, nice wines and usual fun conversations about our day. Tomorrow? Gosh, who knows….today is now hard to beat!!
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