I listen to a classical radio station from Seattle and the other day they offered a discounted trip on the Victoria Clipper boats that go on whale-watching trips. So I took a day off from work on Thursday, we got up at 4:00 in the morning, and took the train into Seattle to board the ship.

We were greeted at the docks by an otter that clearly knew where they kept the Krispy Kreme dounts - which I think were originally intended for the guests.

Even though it's the end of June, it's still quite chilly, especially in the early morning and out on the water. We stayed bundled up and bounced back and forth between the top deck and the inside with the hot coffee. I was thrilled to find good coffee on the ship, but hey, it is Seattle...

We headed out towards the San Juan islands, which sit between Victoria (Canada) and the mainland of Washington. We saw a lot of marine life on the way, and lots of beautiful points of land complete with lighthouses.

We passed "Point No Point", which is named that way because it looks like a peninsula from one side but in fact isn't. Christina and I got into a philosophical argument because I think if it isn't a point, you can't name it "Point" No Point. Christina took the side of "That's the 'Point', it's not a Point". After a heated discussion, we agreed to disagree, and decided that if it were in the South it would be called "Ain't No Point". Marjorie tends to stay out of these discussions between Christina and me.

Along the way we saw two different "Pods" of Orcas - which although they are named "Killer Whales", have never been recorded to have killed anyone. These beautiful animals have a similar lifespan, reproductive and so on to humans. Several of the Pods (there are J-Pods, K-Pods and yes, even an I-Pod) are endangered.

the ships do a pretty good job of not harassing the animals, by shutting down their engines and staying well away from their activities. I had to use a pretty good zoom even to get these pictures. And they also track the animals (you can tell the different ones by their "saddleback" markings) for the scientists.

We eventually reached "Friday Harbor", which is a small town in one of the San Juan's. We had our traditional picnic lunch of olives, bread, deli meats (mmm - Black Forest Ham) and cheese.

When we got back to Seattle, there was a sailboat regatta, and we stayed on the docks for a moment watching the race. A quick dinner of Indian food was followed by a  long bus-ride home (the train was long gone by that late in the evening).