Through the rise and falling apart, we discover who we are.

On with the show...

When we woke up on the first day, and saw that the sun was shining, we decided it was a good day to go out for a whale watching tour, which we really wanted to do.  Most places were closed, but one guy, Captain Jim, runs all year long.  It was cool.  He doesn't take out more than 6 people at a time, and on this particular day, it was only me and my wife.  Some of the tours are on large boats with tons of people.  His way of doing it is cool, because you really get to know him, and he tells you all kinds of things about the islands, the wildlife, and the history of the area.

Unfortunately, we didn't see any orcas, but we saw a lot of other wildlife, and the scenery was amazing.  I've decided not to post much of the scenery, in order to put up more wildlife shots.  Now, I realize some of these pictures are a little blurry, and maybe tilted a bit.  It's hard to take pictures with a 300 mm zoom on a swaying boat

 

The first bit of wildlife we spotted was a bald eagle sitting atop a tree.  As I've mentioned in other entries, I love my telephot lens.

The closest thing to an orca that we saw was a Dall's Porpoise.  Many people who don't realize what they are think that they're baby orcas.  It's easy to see why.  They were fast (can swim up to 30 mph), and getting pictures was tough.  This was the best I got.

Apparently, peregrin falcons are rare to see.  Captain Jim was telling us that he once had a birdwatcher on his boat who had never seen one, and was going blind.  They spotted one during the tour, and the guy cried because he thought he'd never get to see one.  Pretty cool.

We crossed into Canadian waters, and the Canadian Navy came after us!  Kidding, they were only out on an exercise and didn't pay any attention to us.

For the first couple hours, we had seen seals poking their heads out of the water every now and then.  Then, finally, a rock covered with harbor seals.

 

Here's an interesting part...  At some point, some guy bought this little island and wanted to turn it into "Safari Island."  He imported a couple breeds of deer from Europe and big horn sheep from the Middle East.  Now the guy who owns Oakley owns the island (and built a giant bomb shelter on it... ummm... ok) but the animals are still there.  Here's a fallow deer and big horn sheep.

We saw many different types of duck, but none were as pretty as the harlequin duck.

The last animal we saw was a sea lion.  These boys are big.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any out of the water.

So, no whales, but the tour was still really cool.  It's something I would recommend to anyone.

That's it for Honeymoon installment #2.  Next will be some random images from around San Juan Island that didn't involve the town of Friday Harbor or the whale watching.