Today Sayer and I went on a whale watching boat trip. It was fun but a bit difficult. The water was choppy and the ride was long. It was challenging for us both at various times. Sayer got a little bored waiting for the whales. He kept asking, "are we still in the ocean?" and "I don't think we'll ever see whales". The journey started at 10 am as we set out from the Santa Barbara harbor and headed towards the Channel Islands.

We saw tons of dolphins and that was really fun. They were playul and loved swimming along with the front of the boat. the kids all loved it.

We finally got out in the channel and saw some blue whales. They were huge! It impressive to think of the annual journey they make. The naturalist told us how they migrate up and down the coast 5,000 miles each way. The watching was hard for Sayer though because he couldn't see well and I had to hold him the whole time in order to get him up higher (which is why there are no pics of whales sorry to say). The whales just surface for moments and then dive down for upwards of 5-10 minutes. So, it was difficult to keep Sayer interested. It was awesome though when you did see them and he loved seeing the plumes of water from the blowholes. We also saw a bunch of sea lions all along the way.

After the whale watching, we went to one of the Channel Islands (Santa Cruz, I think) and saw a water cave called The Painted Cave, which they said was the world's largest sea cave. It was very cool. Our boat was too big to really go very far inside. It was beautiful though.

He started to get tired of the whole trip at this point (so did I). You can imagine what he's saying right? "no more pictures Mommy" LOL

We rallied though and enjoyed just playing and hanging out together on the ride back to the dock. His shoes got all wet so we found a sunny spot and played and snuggled while his shoes dried off. He cuddled up next to me and we enacted these little ocean battles between his plastic stingray and saw shark. Life is like that- little golden moments handed to you at unexpected moments.