Our real plan with coming to Seward was to go on a whale watching tour. I heard an advertisement on the radio and thought it sounded super fun. the glacier tour last year was a bit of a bust on number of glaciers, but it was still a great time. So I figured Matt and Thomas would be game for looking for some whales. Henry, of course, had no say in the matter... ;)
Since we had some time to kill after breakfast, we headed over to the town park right off the bay. Thomas never says no to time at the park!
He was super excited about being at the top of the slide - less so once he was halfway down... But he must have liked it well enough, because he kept going back for more!
Someone offered to take a photo of all four of us at the park. It's rare we get one with us all, so it was a super nice gesture. (And I seriously doubted a lady with her two grand kids was going to try to run off with my camera.) How nice is the view from this park?
On to the whale watching! We started seeing whales right away. There was one whale frolicking around right next to an otter. The captain on the ship was great at spotting the sealife and letting everyone know where to look. And since it was a weekday, it really wasn't that crowded on the boat. We could actually get photos without having to fight for a spot at the railing. (Yes, I'm referencing you, glacier cruise!)
Thomas even got in on the photo taking action. He may be most talented at shots of his forehead but he sure was trying hard to get a photo out the window like everyone else. :)
Henry really didn't understand what all the fuss was about.
I was super excited to see the "blow" when the whale surfaced. In my mind it was going to be this huge cloud of mist 50' up in the air. So it wasn't quite like the childhood drawings of a whale... but it was still pretty cool!
And the best part - the tail up in the air. This is apparently called a fluke and the dives where the fluke comes out of the water are the deep ones. So when you see this awesome sight, don't expect to see that whale again for awhile!
Thomas did super good on the tour, but he did start to get bored after awhile. We weren't too keen on letting him walk around outside though, so he mostly stayed inside with one parent while the other one took photos. Matt busted me bargaining with Thomas that he could play his Elmo alphabet game if he would stop trying to run across the boat...
Other than the whales and otters, we saw bald eagles!
And Sea Lions!
And Harbor Seals (oh my)!
And we finally lost the kiddo. He seemed to have a good time looking for the wildlife and even nodded off to nap time without too much trouble. A successful day all around!