Whales

First things first..... before I get into the doll photos, I want to share one of the highlights of our trip, one of the most amazing things I've ever seen......the whales of St. Vincent.

St. Vincent is a small village in the middle of the southwest coast of the Avalon Peninsula. There's a wide gravel beach there, where the shore drops deep down into the ocean. The humpback whales like to come feed on the caplin when they roll in to spawn, and then rub themselves on the gravel bottom. Large groups of whales come, feeding, breaching, lunge-feeding, and just 'having fun', right off shore.

​We've always wanted to see them, but the first two times we went there, on previous trips, it was so foggy we couldn't even see the beach. But this time it was a clear sunny day, and when we arrived around dinner time, the whales were already putting on quite a show.....

...just fifty feet off shore....

There were about two dozen whales frolicking about....

This one seemed to like swimming on it's back....

Several, with mouths open, would come up at the same time....

We just sat on the beach and watched.......taking the occasional photos.....

One of the biggest groups of whales was putting on a show at the far western end of the beach, directly backlit by the setting sun....

..but the beach was over 3 km long, and the gravel was too hard for me to walk on.....

So we decided to just stay over night, and watch the whole spectacle again the next day....

We had never seen anything like it before.

  Even with dozens of whales breaching, neither of us managed to catch a shot of one up out of the water, but then, that makes for a good reason to go again another time.....