Hawaii Vacation - Part 4

Finally continuing the vacation pictures. I'm telling you I have 500 of these to go through. So we pick up our vacation the evening we got back from the aquarium. We were watching the sun set from our balcony when a whale and her baby started waving to us. It was so cool. I don't know if the momma whale was teaching her baby a new trick or what...but from our perspective it looked like they were waving to us. It went on for at least 5 minutes...well at least enough time for me to go get the camera, take 5 to 20 pictures, a video, AND a few pictures of Lisa holding Alyssa and showing her the whale.


This one might have been another nomination for "picture of the trip" but for some strange reason Alyssa was covering Lisa's eyes.




Click HQ in the bottom right of the movie screen for higher quality.





Next day...it was off for a little WHALE WATCHING!! Dennis and Terri were nice enough to watch the girls and give Lisa and I some time alone. We drove to Lahaina and went on a tour with the Pacific Whale Foundation. While it wasn't the most ideal picture taking day, the dolphins and whales did not disappoint.



I included this one because we gave my dad such a hard time when he first visited us in Alaska. We were driving along the stunning Copper River with the mammoth Wrangell Mountains in the backround when Lisa finally yelled at him "Put the bleeping GPS away and look out the window!!! You're missing it all!!!" Well turns out it's hereditary. This is a picture of me looking down at my new GPS while whales are breaching all around me. After Lisa took the picture, I realized my error and put the GPS away for the rest of the tour.

We went straight out to the island of Lana'i and caught up with a school of dolphins who immediately started swimming up next to the boat. It was an awesome 30 minutes or so. I probably took 30 pictures...here are a few of the best.





Just as we were about to turn around and start looking for the whales, we saw something that looked like a whale tail. As we got closer, we realized that it actually was. It was a mother whale hanging out upside down for 10 minutes at a time while her baby nursed (well that was at least the theory). It was pretty amazing.


She would come up for a breath, then go back upside down with her baby at her side. It was pretty strange to see...but sure was easy to take pictures.






After watching this go on for 20 or 30 minutes, we headed back to where most of the whales hang out. Thankfully this came at a good time, cause I was starting to feel a little nauseous from the bobbing up and down. It didn't take long before we started coming across whale after whale hanging out in the mating grounds between the 3 islands of Maui, Lana'i, and Kaho'olawe.









While we saw more than our fair share of whales breaching, we were only able to get baby whales on film. It was easier to get the little fellas cause they would jump over and over like they were either practicing or playing around.

So some of these are zoomed in..some are not. I'll leave it up to you to guess which ones.







This last one, you can see how close the baby was jumping next to her mom.

So just as we start heading in and Lisa and I are about to take our seats on the rear of the boat, a huge whale breached only 100 or so yards behind us. The whale came completely out of the water. It was phenomenal. I was holding the camera in my hand but didn't even try to bring it up and take a picture...partly because I knew I wouldn't have time to get any kind of picture, but mainly because I didn't want to miss a second. It was absolutely breath taking.

I was going to finish off the vacation on this post...just too many pictures left and it's already midnight. So ONE MORE!!! Hopefully I'll get to it one of the next two nights. Hope you are enjoying...we certainly did.