This is exactly how I pictured New England. Sailboats and lighthouses. The big eggs are the Deer Island Sewage Treatment plan.

We took a half day whale watching trip one day and it was sunny and warm when we left the Boston harbor. The farther out we went, the worse the weather got. Dark and foggy and then freezing rain.

I saw my first wild northern gannet. They were pretty far out and would fly off when the boat started to get close. One of the bird rescue sanctuaries in the Tampa area has a few of them that were rescued at some point over years off the coast of Florida but I’ve never seen them flying out in the wild. We saw several during the trip.

An hour and 40 minutes later we found some whales. We had traveled over 40 miles since the whales were moving farther away for the winter. Everyone who had been huddling in the warm cabin came out in the freezing drizzle. There were a lot of whales that were close to the boat but none of them breached and came out head first. Most of the ones we saw were Minke and Fin whales. It was a lot of fun and everyone was really excited. My husband was not that impressed. He said they just look like really big dolphins. He’s not wrong but it was still a fun afternoon.

When we got back to the Boston harbor it was sunny and mild again. Since I have a tendency to get seasick, I had a patch on for the boat trip. I’m glad I did because even though it was sunny and calm in the harbor, it was rough out there away from the harbor and many people were getting sick. They passed out ginger candy as we left but I think many people thought they would be fine since it was calm in the harbor.