As much as I would prefer they weren’t, my parents are here on vacation for 10 days during a global pandemic. Among all of their planned activities, I agreed to participate in only a few activities and whale watching was one of them.

When I was working on a cruise ship in Alaska, we would often see whales and other wildlife while sailing, but I never went on an actual whale watching tour before. It’s been a very dry and sunny summer here in Seattle, which made for a great trip around the San Juan Islands, where pods of Orca whales are known to gather.

However, since Canada’s borders are still closed, we couldn’t travel far enough out to see much. We did spot one pod of 5 whales and ended up following them along the coast for a bit.