Day 6 - 2025 East Coast Adventure - A Whale of a Day

 7/23 - Winter Island, MA to Winter Island, MA

Today, for one of the rare days on the trip, we had an actual deadline to meet.  We're going whale watching!  

As such, we got an early start to morning with camping breakfast special (tortillas with peanut butter and raisins). However, we also a leftover cinnamon roll that was DELICIOUS!

Amy drove us over Gloucester and we checked in to get our tickets and then onto the boat (Hurricane II) we went. We went out with Cape Ann because we heard that they were the best and with a 100% whale sighting guarantee, how could you go wrong. And it only took about 30 minutes for them to live up to their guarantee!







The boat was pretty casual when suddenly it made a significant turn and then slowed down. Then they told us why - they had spotted the whale named "Sea Dog".  Seadog is a juvenile humpback whale that they have been sighting since 2024. While still a juvenile, it sure seemed big to us!  There was also a mola mola (AKA ocean sunfish, AKA (best Boston accent) "a baby $@#$# whale" (iykyk). 





After a while of watching Seadog, we moved on to the next whale which they had spotted just a couple miles away. This one was even smaller. But being smaller, it was also far less predictable for which direction it would go and at one point, it open mouth fed within 15 feet of the boat. Now THAT was exciting!

After we watched it for a while, we moved on. We found another, much larger mola mola and then went back to watch Seadog before coming back in. While 3+ hours for 4 animals is a lot of time, it was a PERFECT day to be on a boat and it was amazing to see these animals in the wild. 

After whale watching, we stopped at Henry's grocery store for some lunch. We were all hungry because we left with WAY too much food. But it was all delicious including a cup of new England clam chowder!

From there, we cruiser back into downtown Boston because we wanted to check out the science museum. The museum was pretty good overall, but their electricity show was incredible. 

For a bit of a science nerd history lesson, Robert van de Graff was a researcher at Princeton/MIT and developed what is now known as the van de Graff generator. It is capable of building up tremendous amounts of electric charge which then can discharge like lightning. The first large scale one (40 ft tall!) was built at MIT and eventually donated to the Boston science museum who use it as the centerpiece of their electricity show to this day. 

                                            


Anyways, the show featured Tesla coils, the van de Graff generator, as well as some other fun electrical tricks. It was amazing. 




After the museum, we headed back to camp. But since we left the museum at 5 pm, it took a LOT longer than the drive down. As a result, we ended up taking the scenic route down the beaches north of Boston. Eventually (and I mean eventually - 16 miles in 80+ minutes), we made it back to camp. 

We made a must-go dinner of canned veggies with Mac and cheese. Then the boys went to the beach while Amy and I explored the rest of the campground. The boys were loaned shovels while at the beach so when Amy and I found them, they were covered in sand and had holes up to their waists. 

So, the boys finished the evening with showers and Amy and I finished cleaning up camp and getting ready to go back on the road tomorrow. Another good day!


                                                    


# miles driven - 1,075
# states - 10

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 2 - 2025 East Coast Adventure - Dolphins and a Water Park in a State Park

Image
 7/19 - Chesapeake, VA to Killens Pond, DE Well the anticipated storm as we went to bed arrived and dumped LOTS of rain on us.  AS such, we had a damp start to morning. Amy woke early and had gone out for coffee (I forgot to pack ground coffee - first discovered mistake) and gas us up. She encountered lots of closed stores that early, but persistence paid off.  We enjoyed bagels for breakfast and then boys explored park while Amy and I packed up trailer. We had a long drive day so we didn't linger.    After a minor detour, we found the route to the bridge tunnel highway. After a quick inspection "are your propane tanks closed?", we were onto the bridge/tunnel.  As our first surprise of the trip, before we reached the first tunnel section, we saw 30-40 dolphins in the water!  Unfortunately, only Sebastian and I got to see them before we drove past.  However, we all got to see many kayakers/boats enjoying their Saturday on Chesapeake Bay. We enjoyed...
Read more

Thoughts after a month back home

Image
It's been a month since I got home.  I wanted to put some notes of reflection on record, but I also wanted to have a chance to re-connect with the normal world before I did.  30 days feels like a good number of days to have the perspective to come to some conclusions on the trip and life in general.  So, here goes. Main notes from the trip     - The USA has a LOT to see in it.  As a family we only entered ten states and really only entered two of them (Idaho and Arizona) in passing on the highway.  We spent almost eight weeks in these eight states and saw snow capped mountains, farmlands, deserts, canyons, rivers, waterfalls, rain forests, sandy beaches, rocky coasts, and volcanoes.  There are many countries that can't offer half of this list.      - Despite having nine weeks to do all the exploring we did, it felt rushed.  We covered almost 7,500 miles in those nine weeks so there's a reason it felt rushed, but when I left, of...
Read more

Day 20 - 2025 East Coast Adventure - ANOTHER State Park Pool!

Image
8/6 - Chenango Valley State Park, NY to Little Buffalo State Park, PA We woke up to cool dry air this morning after an amazingly quiet night (especially considering camp has over 100 sites).  We all started our day with oatmeal.   Today was planned as a bit of a casual transition day - we didn't expect much of the day other than to get us to Little Buffalo State Park which would serve as our launching point for tomorrow's big day.  As such, we packed up and got on the road. Because we had yet to find a good maple donut, we continued our search and planned for a stop at Manni's in Binghamton.  Unfortunately, in all my driving, I had gotten lax with my attentiveness and failed to notice the combination of narrow roads and high curbs that Binghamton offers.  As such, I made my left hand turn a bit sharp and took out curb with the Pathfinder.  Before I could react and stop, I looked in mirror and watched as the trailer went airborne with its own bump off t...
Read more