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Monti’s love for her headbands and glasses have prompted several people to comment about her being a Tenenbaum family member. I think she would fit right in with Luke Wilson and his movie family.

While Mary was in town we needed to feed her addiction to geocaching. We tried to find a geocache near the Seattle Center but there were too many "muggles" (Non-geocaching people) around to find the micro cache. We did have have some luck earlier in the day so not all was lost. It was nice using Mary's GPS which is made especially for those traveling by feet.

After seeing an IMAX movie in Seattle with the Haddons, Dahlia was a little restless and started climbing on some of the exhibits at the Science center. As I was yelling at her to get off the DNA I couldn't help but think it was a cute picture so I tried to inconspicuously take a picture on my iphone while continuing to scold her for her actions.

We headed out to Carnation, Washington for our annual berry picking.
We found ourselves stuck in between the end of strawberry season and
the beginning of raspberry season. After picking berries for 20
minutes we ended up with only $6.60 worth of berries.

I have told Monti since she was a baby that the whales just love her. We have always had special experiences around these creatures at zoos and aquariums. As the captain of the boat announced we had to get back because time was up the pod of orca whales we were watching started to do a good-bye show for us. Monti knows those orcas were just saying “We will miss you!”

Humpback whales each have unique marking on their tails which are used to identify them. Here is a nice shot of one of the whales we were watching. There is supposedly a woman in Sitka who will identify the whale in your photo if you bring it in to her. Anyone out there know this fluke?

All of us were in desperate need of telephoto lenses on this Alaskan cruise. Maggie is here taking a photo on her iphone though the binoculars view. Amazingly this technique works fairly well. We were kicking ourselves all week for leaving our nice camera and lenses at home.

Our whale watching in Juneau was almost a perfect 10 which is saying a lot when I am the reviewer. It was simply awesome! The area we were in was a plentiful feeding ground for all types of sea creatures. We saw dall’s porpoises, humpback whales, orca whales, and even a bald eagle score himself a fish. It was suggested at the end of the trip that we should never go whale watching again because we would just be disappointed. I found myself wishing the whole time that I could have everyone I hold dear with me to share in the experience.

While whale watching we saw one of the most amazing example of collaborative feeding by sea mammals called bubble net feeding. A group of whales up to 30 in size work together to capture herring. It occurs when the concentration of herring in an area is high. It is believed that one whale dives down and starts forming a circular net made of bubbles while another whale produces a feeding call that the school of herring will swim away from. The 2 whales are positioned in such a way that the school of small fish swim right into the area being surrounded by bubbles. Once the herrings are in place the whales do a mass lunging to the surface where they filter out thousands of gallons of sea water through their brush like teeth called “baleen” keeping a mouthful of food. The bubble net feeding behavior was first described in the 1980’s and it is still not completely understood. We were very fortunate to see such an event.