Today was Whale Watching Day!  We carpooled and convoyed to Gloucester and boarded the big ship…

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I takes awhile to board; conversation was lively:

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Our intrepid caravan leader, Cape Cod resident, Trevor Lake:

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Once the boat was underway we could enjoy the sights of the harbor:

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We were headed about 30-40 miles out, about halfway to Provincetown on Cape Cod…

Our first sighting of a whale:

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Due to the natural features of the ocean bottom and other sea life in the area, whales return to about the same areas to feed, providing easy viewing for tourists like us on our boat and all these other boats in the area.

Whales generally travel together is loose associations (not pods – pods are livelong “families” of whales).  They seem to do two things:  surface and spout, and dive. I was hoping to see them jump out of the ocean like in the insurance commercial, but no luck.

The whales were plentiful today, as they surfaced and spouted:

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When they dive, we get to see their great tails; the people who study these whales identify them by the markings on their tails:

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After seeing many, many whales, we headed back to Gloucester; then we headed to Rockport to see this picturesque town and have lunch.  Rockport was crazy busy this afternoon…

Our carpool buddies, Victoria and John:

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The town and harbor of Rockport:

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This church was having a little work done; notice the top of the steeple sitting on the ground:

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We had a delightful lunch of lobster rolls, with a nice white wine from New Zealand.  We headed back to the Villa; we have a meeting tonight to discuss our next two days as we travel to Boston!

PS:  As an update to our visit to Fallingwater on June 22, we saw on the news today that Mill Run, the creek that runs beneath Fallingwater, is at flood stage due to recent rains; the news story featured this photo of the team rescuing a statue that was toppled in the flood:

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(Sorry for the size… blame the newspaper…)

We had seen the statue, sitting adjacent to the plunge pool:

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Apparently, all is now well…