Maine with Mom: Monhegan Island

So another day on our trip up to Maine, we took a ferry out to Monhegan Island, which is a famous place where lots of artists have gone to paint. Behind us is the town where there are lots of cute shops and restaurants and way toooooo many tourists.

But there are also some really nice hiking trails, so my Mom and I hiked to the other side of the island to see the views.

Maine with Mom: Whale watching!

Been too busy to update the blog because I was in Maine for most of the week! My Mom and I drove up to Boothbay Harbor last Sunday.

On Monday we decided to go whale watching and in the process got a nice tour of some of the coastline around Boothbay Harbor. Lots of lighthouses of course.

We only saw one whale the whole time, but he was very friendly. Apparently if the whales decide they don't like you, they can swim more than 3 km away before they need to come back up for air. This one just hung out at what was apparently a very good fishing area. He or she would come up about every 4 minutes or so and hang out at the surface for a while before diving back down again.

It's called a finback whale, and although it doesn't look like it in the picture, the whale was actually huge - about 70 feet long. It's the second largest whale. The reason it doesn't look that big is that the fin is really far down its back, making it look deceptively smaller than it is.

The whales leave behind these circular marks in the water from the oil on their tails as they swim through the water.

In general it was just very pretty there. I took these after dinner as we watched the sun set.