Move-cation cont'd

THANK YOU...

Helen for your continued support every year!  We are so glad we got to finally meet you last summer!  I believe with Helen's donation a couple of days ago, we officially passed the half way mark to our goal of $5560.  Nine days left!!!!

Blog time...we are up to our first full day on the ferry from Haines to Bellingham.  After our brief layover in Sitka, we were back on board and resumed our trip south.  This ship wreck seemed like a pretty good sized boat.  Definitely gave me pause and thankful our weather was so perfect.

 That evening, things got very entertaining as we started spotting whales!  

The first few times we saw whales, they were a pretty good distance away and always seemed to be going the opposite direction.  

Girls were still in good spirits and having fun.  

Passing time before dinner...playing games and reading books.

All the excitement finally caught up to Katy. 

Right before dinner, I noticed something on the horizon....something I had seen many times from Anchorage looking across Cook Inlet in the winter.  But I had never seen this on the water!  It's called fata morgana and it's pretty much a mirage...caused by a temperature inversion and light being refracted...uhhhh....by the swamp gasses.  Yeah I don't know how to explain it but it's pretty cool to see.

Even Alyssa seems impressed.

So that first evening we decided to eat at the restaurant which was a nice buffet.  During dinner, I couldn't help but take a picture of the huge sun dog.  Then the captain comes over the loud speaker and announces that there was an impressive fata morgana off the bow and tried to briefly explain it.  Since I had already seen it, I was inclined to keep eating but he mentioned how rare it is and that there is a ship on the horizon...and that there was an upside down mirror image!!!  That piqued my interest!!

I snapped this picture looking out the front of the boat which by itself doesn't look that impressive.  

But zoom in......

and check it out!  A mirror image of a huge ship as well as the tug next to it.  How cool is that!!??

Things got very good after that...an amazing sunset and more whales!

We spent quite a bit of time that first full evening on the boat watching whale after whale surface and then dive back down....all while the most amazing sunset was going on.  

Pretty perfect way to end a fun-filled day.