WHALE TALES!

Today is Stud's 27th birthday, and he of course, has to work.  But yesterday, he had a day off so instead of giving him a gift, I planned a birthday day celebration.  He had no idea what we were doing until we were about half way there yesterday when the the curiosity finally got the better of him.  For his birthday, we went to Plymouth, MA and had lunch, went WHALE WATCHING, and then had a picnic dinner on the beach!  I planned a pretty awesome day if I do say so myself.  Plymouth was 1. closer than I thought (only an hour) and 2. a very cute New England harbor town!  Before we got on the boat, I made sure we went and actually saw THE Plymouth Rock.  I had no idea there is a literal rock.  What I also learned is that the Pilgrims first landed at Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod, were dissatisfied with the lack of fresh water and the bad for crops sandy soil, so left the women and children behind to explore the Massachusetts coast, eventually settling on Plymouth.

 

Whale watching was much more crowded than I thought it would be on a random Thursday.  We went with a company called Captain Johns and I think they sent out three boats yesterday afternoon.  Each boat had a naturalist on board who knows all sorts of random facts and can also identify all the whales.  It was about an hour and half ride to the whale feeding grounds, and once we were there, the whales put on a great show!  We found a group of four humpback whales feeding together, and they surfaced several times very close to our boat!  Some of the pictures below are from the Captain John blog since I was too entranced by the whales to take decent pics!

Captain John

Captain John

Captain John

And then the very best!  We had a whale do a spinning head breach and one of the passengers managed to capture it on video (I love his commentary - I got that!):

Then we drove to the beach and had a picnic dinner while the sun set.  It was a great way to end our day.  I think Stud was able to enjoy his birthday (a day early) and get to relax some as well.  And whales are the coolest.  For sure.