Well, spring is finally here and things are growing fast to utilize the short summer months. We have been busy living and enjoying life the last month or so. Hiking, fishing, boat work, picnics on the beach and just getting out and seeing people. My work with the theater is pretty much wrapped up for the season and will get some time off before the summer STAR program and then another break before the new season starts up. In the meantime I am working full time at the lab and some small gigs here and there. So all in all things are going really well and we are loving the lifestyle we have chose.
As an example of this I got a rare opportunity to capture some truly amazing footage this week while at work. My office is about 300 ft from the harbor we live in, a 1/4 mile walk around the back to actually get there though, and it overlooks beautiful Auke Bay. Shortly after arriving at the office we saw some whales just off the breakwater. The night before had been a brief sunny evening so Sarah and I went out to have a picnic at Sunshine Cove, watched whales, sea lions and even did a little fishing (no luck), when we got back to the harbor there was a mother and a juvenile whale feeding right in the harbor. They had been there for a while and we saw them very close up but only briefly. The whales were back but this time it wasn't dark and I had my camera, so out the door I went. At first they were on the other side of the bay and they were just rolling back and forth lunge feeding, but then the young whale seemed to figure out how fun it was to breach. He just kept doing it over and over about every 30 seconds or so and as he did his mother followed him. They came across the front of the breakwater right in front of our office, not more than 50 ft. away!! So needless to say I got some great shots and thought to share them, so here goes....

This is looking across the bay, as you can see the whale watching boats didn't even leave the harbor for about 2 hours while this show went on. These folks were really getting their money's worth!

The guy in the skiff got a really nice show, he put down his pole and picked up his camera! Smart man

The whale actually breached twice right in front of him. I kept hit my multi shot button and after looking at the pics its like seeing the same jump over and over, just slightly different backgrounds. It was quite the show for everyone.

This was a nice series of shots and the boat gives some nice scale.

This is right in front of our office, I spend many evening hours fishing off that same point. This guy and his dog got a really close shot, I wish I had been down there

This is a cropped shot, the original was sent to our local paper for their local wildlife photo section

Well, the whale kept going up the side of the bay, around the point and into Fritz Cove, then came back out and ran the outer islands (Spuhn, Battleship, etc) and then went out to Favorite Channel. Most the pics as he left were not as good and eventually I just had to go back to work, but when we looked up for the next few hours we could see him playing out in the channel. Truly an amazing morning!