June 19th - Whale Watching

Today we went whale watching and it was great!! I found the Odyssey Whale Watch Cruise while I was down on the wharf and saw that they had a 4 hour tour daily. And I found a Groupon for it which made it even better! (You know I only shop RFC). We were both very excited about it and really hoped we would see something.

 It took about an hour to drive out to several underwater shelves where whales tend to feed.  The first hour we saw a Minke whale, which is one of the smaller whales. We saw the Minke whale at a distance. The whale would blow for a few times and then dive for 4-6 minutes. They travel when they dive so it is hard to tell where the whale will surface. The boat crew spots the whales and then they time the dives. They try to anticipate where the whale will surface and which direction the whale will head. We were never able to get really close to the Minke whale.

 The second hour we spotted a Finback whale several miles off in the distance. The Finback whale is the second largest whale and reaches 70 feet long. Since the Finback whale is so large we could see it spout water high into the air.  The Finback was feeding so it dove under water and surfaced rather quickly. The boat drove toward the Finback so we could get a better view, but the whale was also swimming toward the boat.  The Finback actually swam in front of the bow of the boat! We saw the Finback up close and personal and were able to get a few pictures.

Rob and I decided that we both like Portland and we would definitely come back here again.  Portland is a basic city. When you walk through the wharf area, the stores that you see are one of a kind.  Starbucks was the only chains store that I saw. No Bubba Gump Shrimp here. 

(From what we saw, Portland is also very pet friendly. There were dogs with their owners all long the streets. And there were leashed dogs in the open air bars).