Our excursions today weren’t until later because we weren’t able to get off the ship until about 6 PM. Today we spend the day in Victoria Vancouver, Canada. When we arrived, concierge rooms received an invitation to the helipad to watch the ship dock in Canada. We all went up to experience the docking from anything beautiful view point.

Welcome to Canada!

There were seven of us that booked the whale watching adventure – John, Cathy, Johnny, Ryan, Marta, Me and mom. The two crew working were Meaghan and Jake. They were both knowledgeable and fun. The first thing they told us was that they don’t know when or where the whales will appear. But there were two other boats like us, and three zodiacs, looking for the same whales.

This was a 3 1/2 hour tour, and we are only about 15 minutes in when we slow down for a whale sighting. It was a humpback whale, and I believe it’s a boy. They take pictures of the whales and are able to identify them by the color, coding and pattern on their tails typically. This one’s name starts with a T, but I can always get it wrong. Because he has like a T shape letter on his tail. He must’ve at some point done a bridge and then so they knew it was a male.

We hung around with him for a while, he even swim under the boat to get on the other side of us. Then we scooted forward and started looking for some additional whales. We found one other whale.

We were thinking it was about time to head back when the captain kept continuing on to the lighthouse called Race Rock Lighthouse. At first, we thought it was in Port Angeles, but found out later that it was in the opposite direction. The lighthouse is part of a race, rocks, ecological reserve replace it, located at a narrow part of the Salish Strait, the area covers 1.2 sq miles of ocean, rocks, and reefs, but does not include the small envelope of land with the foghorn and the historic Race Rocks Lighthouse itself. That area is leased by the Canadian Coast Guard.

Because of the location in a high tidal current area, there is an exceptional variety of marine life to be found, including marine mammals, sea birds, fish, marine invertebrates, and marine algae and sea grass. It is a hangout area for California and Northern sealions and a birthing location for Harbour seals and it is also the most northerly birthing colony on the Pacific Coast of North America for the elephant seal. We heard about the elephant seals, but didn’t see any unfortunately.

By the time we got back to the dock get, the sun was down and it was about 9:30 PM. We will be pulled away, and headed for Seattle. We had a wonderful adventure together and look forward to another vacation with this crew. Love y’all!