Day 8 - Happy Birthday to ME

I was going to subtitle today, "When in doubt, porpoise" but decided to celebrate my birthday instead. I think today was the best birthday EVER. When I said that to David somewhere in the middle of the day he replied, "Yeah, if today was my birthday it would be the best birthday ever too." It only got better from there.

We started our day on a 7:30am Glacier Bay cruise that ended at 3:30pm and we returned to the same boat at 5:30pm for a whale watching cruise that ended at 8:30pm. It was basically an entire day on a boat but it was AMAZING. We saw so many different things. We saw a glacier calving. It sounded like thunder. We saw whales sloshing around on the shoreline eating fish and the highlight of our glacier cruise was seeing mountain goats sleeping on the random ledges along a mountain face. Mountain goats are beautiful and surprisingly large. They are not your typical goat. We also saw a sow and two cubs in one inlet. They were walking along the shore. There were lots of birds (More Puffins, this time Tufted. The Puffins of Sitka were Horned Puffins.) The wildlife was a bonus but the glaciers were truly unbelievable. They are so violent and blue. The only word I can think of to accurately describe them is awesome.

For the second or thrid time on this trip my cell phone rang in a remote spot. Today it rang in the MIDDLE of the Glacier Bay. When it sounded, David and I looked at each other in complete surprise. It only lasted a few minutes but I got birthday messages.

By the time we got back to the lodge, fog had set in and it was starting to get cold. We were not that optimistic about the whale watching but we'd paid for it so... Motoring out to Point Adolphus with Captain Don had a very ominous feel. I was expecting a pirate ship to come out of the fog and crush us. When we got to Pt. Adolphous we saw "spoutage" immediately. Through the fog we could hear the cries or wailing (no pun intended) of the whales. I didn't realize they made sounds above ground. It started to rain and the fog thickened. Whales started popping up all around us. They are very brazen creatures. Of course when you weight 40 tons I guess you can afford to be brazen. The were all around us. We saw several pods of three-six whales. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. One whale came very close to the boat then stuck its tail 8-12 feet into the air then flopped it down into the water several times. When we didn't move, it came in closer and did it several more times. At one point the whale flipped over and belly exposed flopped its tail at us again. People on the boat though the whale was being a show off. I thought it was being a little aggressive (not a sense you want to pick up from a WHALE -- turns out the captain thought the same thing). We didn't see the breaching money shot but we got a fabulous show. We arrived back at the lodge sopping wet but gitt

It was a GREAT birthday. My mother even emailed me the birthday song since she couldn't sing it to me. It was better than an appendectomy for sure!