Orcas Island (long) weekend

Martin's team got a week off of work as a reward for shipping SQl Server and Visual Studio on time so, since the kids are still out of school, we decided to take a long weekend vacation to Orcas Island. We were excited to go whale watching, it's something I have always wanted to do. So we made reservations and boarded the tour boat, hoping we would get lucky and see some whales.

We were really lucky to see the J, K and L pods all at once just southwest of the San Juan Islands. It's pretty rare to see them all at once like that. The guide said it doesn't get much better than that. I have no idea how many we saw. It's pretty impossible to tell since they're going up and down so much. However, if you consider pods stick together there could have been upwards of 50 orca. The guide knew all the different individuals and could tell them apart by their dorsal fins and she was sure she saw members of all 3 different residential pods.

Once they met up it was a huge reunion and they socialized. We saw a lot of fins, tails and even some happy leaps! We heard the breathing and blowing of water and it was both amazing and exciting. I'd say we were about 100 feet from them or closer most of the time until they kind of split up and went their separate ways. You can only approach the orcas so close, but that doesn't necessarily stop them from approaching boats that are just watching. We couldn't see them as well as I'd like. One boat, not too far from us, (a private boat) was lucky enough to have the whales approach and surround them for a few minutes within just feet. I wish I could've been on their boat, they must have had an amazing show. We could hear their excited "Wow's".

On the way back up the chanel we saw some porpoises jumping out of the water. All in all it was a great trip and I will always remember it. My pictures aren't great due to my pathetic little camera but you get the idea.