Us Fun Folk: Hervey Bay Trip

Last week we drove 3.5 hours north to the coast of Hervey Bay (pronounced Harvey, of course). We had a lovely couple of days there. We walked around and found this cool sea monster,

ate ice cream cones at 9:30 in the morning (scandalous!),

and went to a tiny aquarium. This aquarium, tiny as it was, had sea turtles! And not just sea turtles to look at, but ones to feed and touch!

It was truly amazing!! We got to touch their hard, smooth heads and the algae on the back of their shells, and feel their flippers and the soft flesh of their necks! It was the coolest experience! I could have stayed there all day!
But there was more to see. We headed out to the beach for a short time,

Where we saw the tiniest hermit crabs I'd ever seen! This one was actually one of the larger ones. Sorry, lame picture.

Then we headed back across the street to our hotel to swim in the pool.

I got to hold a sleepy Bridget...

And to cap off a perfect day, I sat in the hotel room while our bathed and pajama-ed children watched TV and thought "wow! I can't do laundry or wash dishes or organize the linen closet!" I love vacation!
The next day we ventured out on a boat to see humpback whales. Hervey Bay is the hot spot to see them. That's the whole reason we made the trip! Well, sadly the whales weren't up for entertaining that day. The day before was an extremely windy, wavy day and apparently the whales were still hunkering in the depths. We saw a fantastic show by one far off in the horizon, but by the time the boat got closer it was done playing. We did see several whales closer, but they just swam up enough to show us their back. Sorry, no whale pictures. But here is us before the trip.