Whale watching in West Sacramento

The kids and I managed to see the whales yesterday! Before I left work at 1 pm I checked the Sacramento Bee website, and it had a map indicating the whales were somewhat down the deep water ship channel in West Sac. So I went to what I thought was the closest location, involving a hike about a mile down one of the gravel levee roads (featuring no shade whatsoever, and with my carrying Douglas most of the way). Unfortunately it turned out I (and/or the Bee map) was wrong about the whales' location, so we had to hike back and then drive a few blocks to the Port of Sacramento ("Serving the Rice Industry"), where they gave us more accurate directions. From there it was a short drive to an impromptu parking lot and then another half mile hike or so to the ship channel where the whales were swimming around. We stood on the levee with a couple hundred others and watched their fins arise out of the water from time to time. Nifty. Douglas, however, was disappointed that he didn't get to see the whales' whole bodies. I'm not sure what he was expecting. We were pretty wiped out by the time we got home.

The picture above is from the Bee website; the whales were too far away for me to be able to get a good picture of them. It shows the mother humpback whale, who has a gash on her back likely from a boat's propeller. The baby also has a gash. They are hoping to use friendly whale noises downstream and unfriendly noises upstream to guide them down the river into the Bay and hopefully out to the ocean again.

I rode my bike in today and saw a first - someone riding her bike wearing spike heels. You see lots of bikes here, but not a lot of heels, and they don't seem like the best combination.

Owen's guitar playing is already significantly better than Dan's or mine. He can easily read music and play a tune. Last night he was working on "Cockles and Mussels" (aka Molly Malone) which was immediately recognizable as such. Also has Old McDonald, Amazing Grace (notes - he already learned the chords to that), and others this week. I think tonight's lesson should go well.