Hailey M.
Girl Reporter
Have you ever been out on the open ocean with nothing but sea in every direction? What about… seeing a whale jump out of the waves and “pose” for a picture? In Dana Point, during their annual whale festival, you can do both of those things.
The Dana Point Festival of Whales is held between March 4th and 5th and March 11th and 12th. The whale festival is filled with art, fun and that cool breeze that runs through your hair! As of this year there have officially been forty-six festivals of whales!
Just a couple weeks ago, my troop decided to go visit Dana Point harbor to take a boat out to the open ocean! The experience was truly amazing. Once my entire troop arrived, we all headed towards the place where our boat dock was. It was awesome to see that our journey had barely even started and we were already seeing seals gliding beneath the water and gulls sitting atop the shallows! Nature had already made an appearance!
The interesting thing was that once we got out into the middle of the ocean, we could barely even see anything! The entire boat was surrounded by fog! But that didn’t stop those whales from making an appearance. Our boat was fortunate enough to see many different sightings of Gray Whales. At first the whales didn’t really come out of the water a lot, but then as our journey progressed, they began to poke out of the water. We began seeing whale flukes (the tail of a whale) peek out of the waves. We even saw a whale breach, which is when a whale jumps out of the water. The Gray whale actually jumped out of the water more than once! At one point, our captain pointed out two whales that had become friends. They were swimming next to each other and coming up to the surface together.
Our troop decided to go on this outing because our other half of the troop, which are Brownies, are working on their Wonders of Water journey so they went to an aquarium As a result, we did something ocean related as well. Also, both of our journeys have to do with nature, so it just worked out that way.
My favorite part of our whale watching excursion was watching the whales jump out of the water. I have always seen pictures on the internet of huge whales leaping out of the water then splashing back in, but I had never seen that in real life. I didn’t really know what to expect so it made the experience even more exhilarating.
Whale watching is definitely something everyone should do sometime in their life. It is absolutely an experience not to miss!
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