09.19.07
Massachusettes side trip – We’ve got Humpbacks!
So we took off early Tuesday morning to make it to Gloucester, MA by midday. The drive went fast enough for a 4 hour drive… and we made it to Gloucester with time to spare. So we decided to have some real east coast food and grabbed some really yummy lunch – bela had fish chowder and fish tacos and i had corn chowder with honey salmon on top. If you ever make it to Gloucester, head to Mag’s Diner!
After lunch, we hopped onto a Whale Watching Tour. This was one of the most amazing trips we’ve done. I’ve been on a whale watching trip before, but the activity we experienced was uncommon. We found about 5 humpbacks that would take turns diving and surfacing so that we had uninterrupted surface activity for over 45 minutes. There was a mother whale and her calf, and the calf was quite active. We saw lob tailing (bobbing its tail up and down vertically), repeated fin slapping, side breaching, and even a full breach!! This is one thing that i’ve always wanted to see in person. It was so exciting.. the breaching whale was very far off, but did it 2 or 3 times in a row and most of us got to see it in the distance. My picture is quite blurry and small – its not so easy to catch that on camera! The whales were very inquisitive, and even came quite close to the boat many times- and would even dive under the boats to go from side to side – almost like it wanted every one to have a great view. After our long session of viewing it was time to head back, so we enjoyed the sea air as we returned to town.
We enjoyed the rest of the evening right on the ocean. We took a walk on the beach in the morning and went on a house tour of Beauport in town. I’d been there before and the tour wasn’t quite as good this time but it was still awesome to see. We ended up going geocaching around the area. We hit Rockport for some more yummy seafood and to take a picture of the most famous buildings in the world (so they say). We tried one cache more on the way back, but we got sent on a wild goose chase- our gps unit had the wrong coordinates so we were almost 30 miles off! we gave up once we figured that out… we’re now back in New Paltz and looking forward to some more climbing!