riverECHO

We’ve been looking forward to our weekend since we arrived last Monday night and we woke up to pink skies and what looked like would turn into a beautiful day. But by the time we had our first cup of coffee the rain started falling. Although I was a bit antsy to get outside and move around, I was quite easily persuaded to pick up my book, fill up another cup of coffee, look out over the ocean, and wait until it cleared. We were also able to talk to my little sister over Skype, who is currently studying for finals at UCSB . . . it wasn’t too hard to pull her away from her studies for an hour and always nice to hear her voice.

By lunchtime the rain let up enough for us to venture outside. Anticipating that the trails would be quite muddy we decided to walk down to the beach and head north until we could go no further. We made it through a series of beaches, each one connected to the next by a cave or a precarious pile of slippery limestone rocks, before we reached a cliff that would prevent us from going any further. I searched the bush line and found a “sort-of” trail that looked like it would give us access to the beach we were staring down at but could not access. I hollered to BJ to join me and as he started walking towards me I spotted a spray of water and a dark figure breach the surface of the ocean. I pointed and we both stared out to sea . . . waiting. Then again, the darkness breached and splashed. It was a whale . . . and a big one! Last time we were out here with BJ’s mom, we spotted two dolphins, obvious because of their fins. But this was no dolphin. It seemed to take forever for the entire length of its body to roll through the surface. We watched it until it seemed to get its fill and then ventured off to explore the trail we found, which didn’t end up to be much of a trail in the end. On our way back to the beach, we spotted the whale again, this time it lifted a fin in the air and slapped it on the water and then held its tail high in the air for a while, almost as if it were showing it off. It was just far enough away that BJ didn’t bother with the camera. We were so excited about our sighting and figured, like the dolphins, it was probably a regular occurrence along the west coast. We told Brendan, who owns the house where we are staying, and his eyes lit up . . . “a whale? . . . I haven’t seen one in the twelve years I’ve lived here!” He immediately ran out the door and headed to the beach to try to spot it. We definitely witnessed something spectacular in this little quiet part of the world. This place just gets better every day.