Saturday, March 06, 2010

And, Are The Gray Whales Passing First Beach?

Saturday, La Push. People everywhere, doing everything. Surfers. Twi-hards (Twilight fans) arriving in clumps, picking their way down to the water to take pictures of each other, running squealing from the now-incoming tide. A para-sailor. Marine-salvage watchers (of which more anon). Whale watchers, me and another vanload, collectively failing to spot... wait... YES!!!

We were first watching across the cove of First Beach, without success.

Where they were, was way out toward the horizon, beyond the buoy. It helps so much to have people looking with you, seeing with you. Once we could see them, there they were. Soon we were calling out to each other, "Blow!!" "Two, I saw two!" M., who had been saying that seeing a blow would not be the same as seeing a whale, was soon just as excited and satisfied as the rest of us. A Twi-hard mom wanted to know what we were carrying on about. Whales, we said. You're kidding, she said, and soon was watching whales with us while her daughters were down on the sand.

No-o-o, that big sploosh in the picture below is a wave on a rock, not a whale. Whale blows on the horizon are way more subtle than that. Don't show up in photographs.

Out there. (Click for larger image.)

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