Swell time

Brief but good trip up to the San Juan Islands; we went out on a wildlife tour boat, and spent quite a bit of the sunny, breezy afternoon exclaiming over the two pods of orcas feeding and swimming around us. Our young and enthusiastic captain and the very young woman who was his first mate and the naturalist/narrator for the trip were terrific. He got us out in the viewing area for the orcas, cut the engines, and as we sat the legal distance from the feeding orcas, the animals turned around and came right out past us, porpoising and feeding alongside the boat. If your craft is just sitting there and the animals approach you, everything's fine; if you stalk them like one small boat was doing, there are some folks who come over in a fast little inflatable and inform you about leaving the animals alone. At one point, some jerk in a fancy cruiser came bombing right into the waters where the orcas were feeding, on a possible collision course. Our intrepid captain blasted a warning to them with the ship's horn, and the whale protection boat took off after them, eventually catching them and giving them what-for; a stark and depressing example of the low caliber of so many humans.
The day was well-spent, and the orca observation beyond any expectations I'd had for the boat trip. We finished it with a good seafood dinner.