Tag: Puget Sound Express

Orcas

Puget Sound Express (PSE) guarantees that its customers will see whales on their whale watching tours. Their captain and staff stay in contact with other tour boats and make a real effort to find and follow them.

We kept a respectful distance each time we came upon orcas, or killer whales, on two of our three days of travel. This was a pod of five and the PSE staff identified the group. There are both resident and transient pods in our area.

These whales are actually part of the oceanic dolphin family. They surface briefly to breathe. I have a couple dozen shots of their dorsal fins, all that’s left to view if you don’t catch them quickly as they surface.

San Juans here we come

This is a taste of the area through which we cruised with Puget Sound Express last week. We took a (spendy) three day trip but they also offer shorter day tours.

Ours was a birdwatching and wildlife tour and we did plenty of that, zigging and zagging as our onboard naturalist pointed out birding hotspots or the crew trailed and talked about marine mammals. But I was equally taken with the beautiful small and large islands we threaded through on our voyage.

Early April weather in the Pacific Northwest provides only the vaguest hints of spring. Grey skies and light sprinkles reminded us that it could have been much worse. The islands are sheltered enough that winds were light. No choppy seas!

Bob Boekelheide, our Audubon naturalist, even provided commentary on the geology that formed this gorgeous region.

Spring adventure

I’ve wanted to go back to the San Juan Islands, arguably one of the most beautiful areas of Washington State, since the first time I visited by ferry decades ago. It was there that I fell in love with Washington.

A while back I heard about a San Juan Island cruise offered by Puget Sound Express in partnership with Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society. The three day birdwatching and wildlife cruise sounded spectacular. From Sequim our voyage was just across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The photo above is of the MV Glacier Spirit, the family owned cruiser we traveled on.

Inside was comfortable and warm with snacks, lunch, coffee, and good cheer.

This is a chart of our travels over three days through the San Juans, shown in yellow. Vancouver Island is the large land mass on the upper left; to the far right is northern Washington and the city of Bellingham. The thin pink and red lines show our route as we looked for whales, dolphins, birds, and other sealife through the large and small islands of the San Juan archipelago. I’ll show you what we saw over the coming days.