New England Vacation – Day 5: Whale Watching

We must be optimistic parents.

How else to explain why we would choose to go on a 3-hour boat ride with Kai when it had every possibility that it could be a disaster?

It was only a few months ago, during our spring break vacation to Florida, that we endured Kai’s screaming for 20 minutes as we rode on a boat, over choppy waters, that took us out to where we would try scuba diving for the first time.

How would he react on a 3-hour ride that took us further out into the Atlantic?

We had happy faces when we arrived in Provincetown, at the far tip of Cape Cod, where we would board our boat.

But Kai started getting agitated as we waited to board our boat. He had insisted that we go wait in line early, but complained when the waiting went on for about 15 minutes.

When we boarded, we were able to snag some prime seats right up at the front of the boat. But Kai was angry about sitting out in the sun. Yesterday he complained that it was too rainy. Today it was too sunny. This boy is just full of complaints. And it wasn’t just that he complained…

“It’s all Dad’s fault!”

Hoo boy, whose idea was this to go whale watching?

Though once the boat started on its journey, Kai was happy again.

About a half hour after we started out, we spotted our first whales, way in the distance.

And when we got close to the whales, Kai really got excited. I was very happy to see that he was interested in seeing the whales.

He seemed to really be enjoying this!

Every time we spotted another whale, he took great interest in seeing it.

I breathed a little sigh of relief. It made it easier for me to enjoy this adventure.

We ended up seeing many many whales, including three different types: Minke, Finback, and Humpback, including these Humpback:

After about an hour and 45 minutes, Kai had seen enough and was ready to go back. As it wasn’t quite time to return, Kai started to get agitated every time the captain headed toward another whale or to slow the boat for everyone to view. Kai just wanted to get back.

We let him use the iPhone to keep him from voicing his displeasure too loudly.

When the captain finally turned up the motors to head back to shore, Kai was very happy.

I wish he could have been a bit more patient, but all in all, this was a very positive experience. We saw a whole bunch of whales up close – truly amazing sights that these photos just don’t do justice. And Kai did really well overall.

Sometimes it pays to be optimistic.

We had lunch when we came ashore, then walked around Provincetown a little bit. It’s a fun place and my wife and I could have spent hours more there but it was pushing our luck just to get Kai to walk around as much as we did.

Finally, we headed back to our hotel so we could change into our swimsuits and head to the beach.

The beach was full of seaweed and dead sea creatures that had washed ashore. Kai enjoyed looking at them, such as these horseshoe crabs.

But it wasn’t really the kind of place where you’d want to swim, so after a while we went back to the hotel and swam in the pool.

A late dinner capped off our full day.

Kai said that he liked Cape Cod better than Boston. Hopefully that feeling will last through tomorrow as we have one more day here.