Orcas! I saw them! In the wild!
Remember how I was trying to figure out how to use 20 vacation days this year? The best I could do was 10, the week at the writer’s retreat and the following week with family and friends in Chicago. Two more than I took last year, but that still left 10 days.
Some friends organized this big trip to Quadra Island, which is one of many islands, I’ve discovered, around British Columbia. A couple of my roommates also went on the trip, and we decided to take a wildlife and ocean rapids tour.
Whales, oddly enough, were not part of the itinerary. Whale watching is a separate tour, but our tour guide got a call from a commercial fisherman who spotted a pod of orcas. Two of them broke off and, with no objection from any of the 15 of us, we raced back to the point where the wildlife and whale watching tours diverge.
Sure enough, we spotted the two orcas, brothers it turns out, who frequent the area.
It was so cool!
The whole trip was cool. I took a ton of photos. I’m also a bit enamored with the panorama feature of my camera.