Daily Archives: May 4, 2011
Lindo Michoacan and Whales . . .
I finally dragged myself out of bed about 10:30. I think the worse is over, but I sure don’t have much energy. I fixed coffee but didn’t drink much of it.
The best I can figure based on the symptoms is that this is some sort of food poisoning. But whatever it is, nobody else got it. That’s good.
About 2:30 we all headed out to run some errands and have dinner. Nick wanted to drop off some Gypsy Journals at Camping World and we wanted to get some carpet pads for our stairs.
We also went out to Boulder City to pick up mail and packages from Nick and Terry’s mail service.
Coming back to Henderson, Nick talked to our friend’s Barb and Tom Westerfield. They’re here in the Las Vegas area, and we’re going to try to get together soon.
By about 4:30 we were at Lindo Michoacan, our favorite Mexican place here in Vegas. (And apparently everybody else’s too. It’s been voted Best in Vegas since 2004)
After a great meal, (that I still wasn’t able to eat much of) we headed back over to Fry’s Electronics so Miss Terry could get a SD memory card for her new camera.
Then it was home by about 7. I went to bed about 7:30, slept until 10:30, got up, wrote this blog to keep Nick off my back and now I’m going back to bed.
Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have more energy.
To make up for the last couple of short blogs, I’ve reposted our whale watching tour from Cape Cod in August of 2009.
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Thought for the Day:
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." – Plato
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There be Whales here…
Originally posted on August 5, 2009
Today we took a whale watching tour boat out of Barnstable Harbor and unlike our whale watching tour in San Diego in February 2008, this time we actually saw whales… lots of whales… humpback whales everywhere.
We headed out to sea about 2:30 pm on the Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises boat ‘Whale Watcher’.
It’s a 130 foot jet boat that can carry almost 400 people.
It was specially built for whale watching, and the fact that it’s a jet boat means two things. It gets out to the whale area, the Stellwagen Banks, a lot faster, and once there, the fact that it has jet nozzles and not propellers, means that it can get in closer to the whales without worrying about them getting hit with the props.
And we did get close, like right along side.
Stellwagen Banks is a National Marine Sanctuary about 40 miles off Barnstable, MA harbor. It covers about 800 square miles and is basically an underwater mountain ridge that comes to about 120 feet of the surface.
The surrounding seabed is almost 400 feet deep. This means that ocean currents upwell along the steep sides of the ridge, bringing with them nutrients and minerals from the bottom, feeding the local ecosystem and attracting larger animals to the area.
On our way out to the banks, we past by Sandy Neck, an isolated but picturesque vacation area. And by isolated, I mean it can only be reached by boat or ATV and has absolutely no utilities. I guess if you really want to get away from it all, this is the place for you.
The lighthouse dates from 1852 and is still in use, but now it’s solar powered.
It took us about an hour to get out to the whales, but when we got there, they were everywhere.
At first we just saw tails…
and fins !!
Everyone crowded to the sides of the boat trying to get the best view.
And then there they were…
all around us…
We saw several different pods, or groups of whales, and about 15 or 16 individuals.
The whales are identified by their tail markings and the naturalist on board said they have a catalog that lists over 1000 whales that have been spotted in this area since 1972 when they started counting.
Jan and I had a great time as you can see from the smiles on our faces in this pic.
It was almost 7 pm by the time we got back to the dock with more scenic views of the small fishing village.
On our way back to the rig, we stopped for supper at a really good Chinese buffet place called Cape Cod Super Buffet. By the time we got home was almost 9pm and time to call it a day. A great day!
Tomorrow is our last full day here on Cape Cod. Friday we will head out for Woonsocket, RI.
More later…
sgdffd
