Although we almost missed it and had to literally run to catch our boat, yesterday we enjoyed a much anticipated puffin watch cruise and trip to Monhegan Island.
I was pretty darn sea sick on the way to the island, as was Meo, but as I kept my eyes on the horizon and willed myself to roll with the 8 foot swells I was still able to enjoy seeing some passing birds like cormorants and a couple harbor porpoises who graced us with a close encounter. Meo had his eyes closed and lay on the seat for most of the boat trip. Once we got to Monhegan Island, our little homeschool group who were going on the puffin watch did not get off the ferry. I decided to buy some seabands for Meo and I if we were going to stay on for another couple hours. I was pretty tempted to just stay on the main land with Meo, but we were so excited to see puffins we didn't want to miss our chance. Fortunately either the seabands or smaller ocean swells helped immensely and my sea sickness went away.
Meo on the otherhand was still pretty sea sick. He popped up occasionally to see a puffin or other exciting siting. But he mostly laid down.
Link was doing fantastic on the boat. He was super pumped up and excited about everything; especially about buoys. But right as we approached the infamous Eastern Egg Rock, the little guy drifted off to sleep in my arms.
I really wanted to get some photos of the puffins so I passed my sweet bundle onto Daddy, who happily snuggled him.
On the way to Eastern Egg Rock we saw some more seals and harbor porpoises, which was AWESOME.
Eastern Egg Rock itself was full of amazing birds. We saw Common and Arctic Terns, Black Guillemots, Common Eider Ducks, Herring Gulls, Greater Black-Backed Gulls, Laughing Gulls, Northern Gannet, and Double-Crested Cormorants.
But most importantly we saw lots and lots of PUFFINS!
The were so cute and fun to watch. We saw them dive, we saw them carry fish, and we saw them fly low over the water like giant bumblebees. They are amazing birds. I'm so excited we got to see them.
The other cool sighting was a razorbill, which are fairly rare for them to see. What really sucked about this trip was that my camera battery was almost dead from the start, and I had charged one the night before but packed a dead battery instead of the full battery on accident. So five minutes into our puffin watch around the rock, my battery died. I tried to take a picture of the razorbill with my phone (below), but there was so many missed photo opportunities. I had to make an effort not to be completely bummed about not being able to photograph this amazing opportunity and just enjoy experiencing it. It really was incredible to see all those puffins!
Around 12:30 we returned to Monhegan Island. There we climbed up to a high spot to eat our picnic lunch with a view.
Then we explored some trails for a bit to see some of the island. It is a really beautiful place! We only had a couple hours there, and it would be fun to go back again and see some more of the island.
We met up to get ice cream with some of our homeschooling buddies.
I found the Tardis and a Dalek on our island adventure too.
By 3, it was time for us to return to the ferry and make our journey back.
Meo and I had a MUCH BETTER return journey. We both wore our seabands, and the ocean was fairly calm. Meo was able to enjoy the whole trip and he and Link pointed out every single buoy we went by. Hopefully they didn't drive anyone crazy besides Daddy.
