Monday, February 22, 2016

San Diego Vacation Day 3: Whale Watching

Thursday morning we woke up, had a quick breakfast in the condo and headed into San Diego to go whale watching. We met up with Josh near the Midway Museum.
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Got to see 'The Kiss' statue and took a picture of mom in front of it.
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Ready for the whale watching cruise!
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Don't they look happy, haha
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That's better
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It took about half an hour to 45 minutes to travel through the bay out to the ocean. We got a nice view of downtown.
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We cruised past the navy helicopter training facility.
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We got a nice view of Point Loma (which we had maybe planned to drive out to but didn't get to it)
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Then our sights were on the ocean searching for whales. I have only been on one other whale watching cruise and that was back in 2001 when I was visiting my brother (same brother) in Los Angeles. It was later in the year, maybe March or April but we didn't see any on that cruise. We had read that February was a good time to see whales so Kyle and I had this on the top of our to do list.
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Mary was getting sleepy and eventually fell asleep on Kyle
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And there they WERE! We actually saw quite a few. I think this picture is from when there was a group of three wading together.
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The only good tail shot I got! The captain said when they kick their tails up like that it usually means they are diving deeper, so although we all wanted to see tails it was kinda a catch 22 cuz that meant they were going away. We saw this tail and then at the end my brother saw another (I didn't get a photo of that one) Otherwise it was mainly blow spouts and back humps.
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Some sea lions resting on a bouy
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It was a perfect day and probably the best day of our whole trip to be out on a boat. The remainder of the trip the waves seemed pretty rocky from our condo view.
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We saw a couple schools of dolphins. It was pretty cool. These guys came up pretty close to us. They were fast so they were hard to capture out side of the water.
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Sea lion swimming (or seal, we're not sure)
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Waving at us with a side fin
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We were watching a pair for a while but it was time to get back. This was about when Josh saw the other tail but I had already put my camera away. I knew as soon as I did the perfect shot would come up!
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We had lunch nearby at The Fish Market. I thought it was going to me like a 'fish market' with lots of different food booths to choose from... I didn't realize it was a restaurant. We had to wait a little while for a table. We were pretty hungry since it was already after 1:00 at this point. And all we had to eat on the boat was smuggled granola bars, haha.
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While Josh went to grab the van we went for a little walk to Seaport Village. Isaac was complaining of the sun so we picked up some sunglasses at a street vendor. He INSISTED on getting these! lol
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After lunch Josh gave us a driving tour around downtown San Diego and into Balboa Park. Isaac liked watching the train.
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Gaslamp Quarter
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Balboa Park
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We made it back to the condo in time to watch another sunset! Can't get enough of those!
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Then Mary and I walked across the street to pick us up some IB Tacos for dinner (IB stands for Imperial Beach). They were amazing! The best $1.95 tacos EVER!
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