Day 4 and 5: Gloucester, MA and Maine

I think Day 4 was the day both my husband and I had been looking forward to ever since we planned this trip. We splurged and went whale watching! I recommend this activity to everyone - it was a positively amazing experience.

Gloucester, Massachusetts is a quaint, sea faring town located on a cape above Boston. The harbor is beautiful and even boasts a few lighthouses.

But the best part was when we finally saw some whales! The first signs of a whale is watching for their "blow". The steam that comes out of their blowhole when they surface is quite visible!

The first whales that appeared were the Sei Whales. This is what they look like when fully viewed:

And this is what we saw from the surface:

They seemed to be everywhere around the boat, but they still would not venture close enough for us to get a better look. I believe the total count at the end of the trip was 12 Sei Whales.

The only other whale we saw was a North Atlantic Right Whale. Our marine biologist on the boat was absolutely shocked to see this whale! She has only seen it one other time and that's because it is critically endangered. There are only about 400 of them left in the entire world......and we saw 4 of them!

Again, this is what they look like when fully viewed:

We were not able to take really good pictures of this whale because he hovered just below the surface as he would puff out 3 or 4 "blows". He is the whale in the picture where I showed you what the "blow" looked like. After his feeding was over, he then would take a dive for about 10 minutes before surfacing again. What an amazingly powerful mammal!

The next day we headed into Maine and stopped by Kennebunkport to view the Bush's summer home.

We also stopped at Cape Elizabeth, just outside of Portland to visit one of the oldest working lighthouses in the U.S.

Eventually, we headed inland - I was really getting sick of smelling fish! We stopped at the Maine Wildlife Refuge so I could actually see a moose!

Before we headed into New Hampshire, we made sure to snap a few pictures of the beautiful scenery. This is raw, untainted, and rugged Maine.......so pretty.