Whalespotting: #AVMTour Recap Part Two

It’s been a very busy week in Stately Bruff Manor. The girls were with me all week, one of five full weeks I’ll have them this summer, and it was a full work week for me. (Extra full, since I’m contributing to a grant proposal due Monday.) Most days involved getting up at 5 or 6, working for a couple of hours before the girls work up, then getting them ready and taking them to camp (Oak Hill Day Camp, which they love), heading into the office for six or seven hours, then picking the girls up from after care (i.e., free time at the swimming pool), getting them showered and changed and fed, then doing something fun (like watching Quantum Leap, which, thanks to the time travel element, is a show that ages well), then putting them to bed and maybe working for another hour, then repeating the whole thing again the next day.

Whew!

This meant no time for processing photos (I have about a thousand, literally, from the AVM Tour I haven’t even looked at) or blogging. Now that the girls are back with their mom for seven days, I’m resuming my summer vacation recap series here on the blog! And I better finish the series this week, since I have the girls three weeks in a row in July. I’m already scouring Nashville Parent magazine looking for fun (and cheap) things to do next month…

Without further ado, here’s part two of my recap of the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Tour…

Day two of the trip dawned bright and early since we needed to be at Pier 39 by 7:30 for our whale watching trip. Our hotel, the Radisson at Fisherman’s Wharf, wasn’t a particularly great hotel, but it was right at Fisherman’s Wharf, so we didn’t have to get up too early. Walking around the touristy part of San Francisco was a little eerie. The evening before, there were thousands of people. Sunday morning, it looked like the zombie apocalypse but without the zombies.

We quickly found the booth for San Francisco Whale Tours, where a number of other whale watchers were assembling. I passed out breakfast to the girls (granola bars) and we got hot chocolate from a nearby coffee shop. The girls were all kinds of excited, and we checked our cameras several times. (Me with my trusty Canon Rebel, Hannah with my old Canon point-and-shoot, and Lily with her pink and purple completely droppable kids camera.)

Soon enough we were being led down the pier to our ride for the day, the Kitty Kat, a 65-foot catamaran with “smooth cat technology for an ultra-comfortable ride.” (I came to doubt that claim later in the day.) After a quick safety talk, the Kitty Kat took to the ocean, cruising over to another pier to pick up a second group of passengers.

The girls and I had a moment of worry at that point, since we were informed that the tour had been accidentally overbooked. Four passengers would have to leave and whale-watch another day. There was no way I was volunteering.  We had flown all the way across the country for the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Tour, and we weren’t about to miss the animal part! Fortunately, a group of San Francisco natives opted out (and scored free tickets to a later tour of their choice). The rest of us cheered.

Then we were off, heading out across San Francisco Bay, past Arkham Asylum Alcatraz Island and under the Golden Gate Bridge. The girls loved standing at the railing of the boat, enjoying the sights and the salty ocean breeze. About the time we got close to the Golden Gate Bridge, the Kitty Kat picked up speed, bouncing over the water and kicking up spray all over the deck. It was the bouncing that frightened Lily, so we took a few quick photos and headed inside the boat’s cabin.

Soon, however, exhilaration gave way to nausea, at least for me. I had forced the girls to chew some ginger gum at the start of the trip, hoping that would be a sufficient anti-nausea precaution. I was hesitant to give them Dramamine, for fear they would konk out and miss any whales. Given the rollercoaster ride we were experiencing at this point in the trip, however, I passed out the Dramamine. Of course, Dramamine is far more effective when consumed before a boat ride, which meant I was in for a long day.

It took maybe three or four hours to cruise out to the Farallon Islands, our there-and-back-again destination for the tour. The ride was a choppy one the whole way there, and, after about an hour, I was a wreck. I found a spot on a bench that gave me a little fresh air, and I sat there with my head down for quite some time, trying to keep it together. As I said in a previous blog post, the worst part was knowing that I was the responsible adult for two small children, and I was in no shape to watch over them.

I instructed Lily to sit right next to me (a job made easier after her Dramamine kicked in and she fell asleep), while I made sure to keep Hannah somewhere in my sights as she flitted around the deck. Lily was a bit queasy at all the up-and-downing the boat was doing, but Hannah was fit as a fiddle and having a blast. For about three hours, Hannah’s absolute enjoyment of the trip (the boat, the ocean, the friendly naturalist she chatted up, the possibility of scoring a free chocolate bar for being the first one to spot a whale) was the only thing that brought a smile to my face.

Sometime after I took my spot on that bench and shortly before I spent a little time at the “ralph corner” at the back of the boat, the ship’s captain turned on the intercom and literally said, “Thar she blows!” Someone had spotted a whale spout, so the Kitty Kat slowed to a crawl and everyone, even the sick and the sleepy (that would be me and Lily) rushed to the front of the boat to scan the horizon.

Sure enough, a few minutes later (long, long minutes of standing and not throwing up) we all spotted another spout, followed by a fin and a tail… quickly followed by another spout, fin, and tail. There were two of them! They were quite far out, but with my telephoto fully zoomed, I could see them pretty well. How I managed to get a dozen shots off while holding onto Lily and the boat rail, I’ll never know.

The girls took turns looking through my camera as the two whales circled (at great distance) our boat. Meanwhile, the captain was checking out the shots made by a couple of passengers with much bigger zoom lenses than mine. (I would have been drooling over their gear had I not been trying to keep my stomach from reversing its usual flow.) After conferring with the ship’s naturalist, the captain confirmed: two blue whales! We were still at least half an hour from the Farallon Islands, putting us in a patch of ocean where, we were told, it’s rare to see a blue whale.

In spite of my stomach, I couldn’t help smiling when I saw how excited our grizzled old captain was to see those whales! Blue whales… the largest animals ever. Ever.

We spent maybe fifteen minutes watching the blues circle the boat. When it had been ten minutes since the last spout, the Kitty Kat started up again, heading to the Farallons. That’s about when I hit my limit and visited the ralph corner. I sat Lily down next to me again (“Look. The. Other. Way.”), but keeping Hannah in sight was harder now, since she was off looking for our next whale spout.

Not too long after, we spotted our third (and, sadly, final) whale of the day, a humpback not fifty feet off the boat. Stationed at the ralph corner, I had a great view of the amazing animal. You know that scene in Cast Away when a whale passes by Tom Hanks’ makeshift raft, and he’s overwhelmed by how massive the whale is? Yeah, that. The bad news was that, stationed at the ralph corner, I didn’t have the fortitude to get my camera out and take a photo. Still, Lily and I had that shared experience of seeing a humpback up close. I’ll never forget that.

Soon after that, we arrived at the Farallon Islands, home to thousands and thousands and thousands of sea birds. I can’t tell you what kind. The naturalist told us, but it was all I could do to get my camera pointed in the right direction; I didn’t hear a word she said. I’ll have to ask Hannah later. I’m sure she memorized the entire lecture. At any rate, the views were spectacular, even if the whole place smelled like a Captain D’s gone wrong. And with the boat not zipping over the waves, I started feeling better.

In fact, I continued to feel better and better for the remainder of the trip. The ride back to SF Bay was much smoother than the ride out, and within half an hour I was recovered enough to start to enjoy myself. Also helpful: Sitting at the back of the boat and facing forward. (I wish the naturalist had mentioned that fact to me about three hours earlier.) After the excitement of the Farallons had died down and it became clear that we probably weren’t going to see another whale on the way back, the girls curled up on either side of me and dozed off. Sitting there with my family beside me made for a very pleasant end to our whale watching tour.

It also made for an epic sunburn of my face, as I discovered later in the evening. It may have been 60 degrees and cloudy, but it was still the middle of June in the northern hemisphere, and the UV rays were out in force. Ouch.

That evening we spent a relaxing time at Ghirardelli Square, stocking up on chocolate bars, enjoying some massive sundaes, and picking up postcards in a gift shop there that wasn’t the least bit tacky. (Also in the gift shop: Vader’s Little Princess, which was spotted by Hannah and appeared as a Father’s Day gift to me when we got back the next Sunday. Hannah saw the book and, later that night, asked her mom to get it for her back in Nashville. Clever girl.)

Thus ended our second night in San Francisco. In my next post, I’ll recap our final day in SF, including our visit to the magical Muir Woods.