There she blows!

That's right, we went whale watching again! We've gone on and on about how much we love living near the ocean; I don't even know how we ever lived so far away from it. Since we both had a day off on Monday, we thought we should do something a little different than just hanging out by the ocean. So we decided on whale watching. Though it was our second time, we saw even more whales and I got even better photos! (PS - click on the pictures to enlarge them, they are amazing!)

Had to take a photo proving the two of us were on the boat...

Our first whale sighting... a good sign for the rest of the trip!

(It was an even better sign that I got my timing down.)

My first good tail shot,

don't worry they will get better.

After a lot of pictures taken from far away,

we stumbled upon a pair of humpbacks...

Here are a few of our favorite shots of them...

(yes, they did both breathe at almost the same time, sweet, huh?)

Then we started to get some amazing shots...

We found a group with three whales

willing to hang out super close to the boat!

Check out their beautiful dive...

After a few dives to go eat, 

they ended up surfacing super close to us!

(Those white shapes under the water are their pectoral fins.)

Later on we found a lone humpback,

and had the closest encounter we will probably ever have with one.

It was unbelieveable.

He (or she) was HUGE!

Had to get a few more pictures of us!

The whale watching trip was amazing. They are incredible creatures and I think that we've started to take the beauty of the ocean and its inhabitants for granted. The trip was great motivation to start thinking more "green." The craziest part of the trip, that I couldn't catch on camera, was this one lone whale that we all spotted breaching, yes BREACHING, way off in the distance. The captain tried to get us over there to see it, but by the time we got close he was done. It was so cool to see the whale leaping out of the water and creating a huge splash. Maybe we'll actually get pictures of that behavior on our next trip. 

Now to leave you with a few more of our favorite photos...