Santa Cruz Island

Went on a whale-watching / Channel Islands trip with my old pal Sofi today. Sofi and I worked together at the ice cream place in Boothbay about 10 years ago, and I hadn't really seen her since. Still as fun as I remembered her. We saw a huge pod of dolphins, 5 or 6 blue whales, and a pair of humpbacks. We also got to go near the entrance of Painted Cave, the longest sea cave in the world, and a cave I had studied (from maps) when I was working on my thesis. Also saw several other sea caves I thought I recognized from maps, but don't know which they were. Anywho, here's some photos... (out of order)


Entrance to Painted Cave, Santa Cruz Island.


Blue Whale. They're BIG.


Huge pod of dolphins. Must have been hundreds of them.


This reminds me of the "tafoni" from the Bahamas, but this is volcanic rock...


Another big sea cave.


As close as we could get to Painted Cave. Total surveyed length is 1500' or so.


Common dolphin.


Blow.


Humpback.


Humpback, mother and calf.


Another Blue.

California.

Here's a couple photos from a trip Jessica and I took to Santa Barbara before we got to work.


Jessica and I after surfing a bit.


Biggest ficus in N. America. 167' span.

More canoe stuff.

Finally had a chance to go down the river right before I took off to California. The river was really low, so there was a lot of frustrating shallow parts where I had to get out and walk, but it was still mostly fun. Never going to run it that low again though. Here's a couple pictures of me goofing around on a flat stretch of the river...

Still need to work on the cross back stroke a bit.


Turning on edge.


Wicked stable.


Oh yeah.

Here's a picture of my coworker Jessica in her kayak. She took the above pictures. She's also who I'm out here in California with...

Excellent form.

And lastly, here's a picture out of the plane window on the way out of Burlington at sunrise (looking east, obviously).

Camel's Hump is the sorta jagged one to the right of the picture. The fog is in the Winooski River Valley (the river that runs through Montpelier and on to Lake Champlain at Burlington).