An Early Birthday Present and Some Ocean Exercise

I turn 44 on August 19th, and hubby has been having a hard time figuring out what to get me for my birthday. Yesterday I spotted an inexpensive underwater camera that would be great for kayaking, taking underwater shots of starfish and for areas that I don't want my more expensive camera to go (Canon Rebel T3i purchased in 2011). No, he didn't make me wait for my birthday.  

For $50 we got the Nikon 30S - it goes to depth of 3 meters/approx 10 feet which is great for snorkeling too as I am a surface snorkeler.  They have put a new model (Nikon 31S) out and have discontinued the model that we purchased therefore it was greatly discounted from the normal $130 price tag.  Luckily we got the last model in town and so we tried it out this afternoon by sea kayaking again. The last time we went sea kayaking we took our first lesson in individual kayaks.  This time we were on our own, and decided to try out a double kayak.  We found it was much harder to steer as you have to use a rudder versus paddles for steering, and even harder to paddle in unison, so decided next time out we will go back to individual kayaks as they are shorter and easier to manouver.  We still managed to see lots of the Estuary and birds.  Two seals made a brief appearance but went under too fast so no pictures of them.

 These two white domestic geese are no longer domestic, they winter with the Canadian geese in a farmers field and in the summer hang out by the Estuary with a few of their buddies that didn't fly North for the summer.  I spot them every few weeks as the road goes right by the Estuary and field.

This heron let us get very close, only 15 feet away before flying a short distance away.  

The only scare of the day happened when the above float plane decided to land almost right on top of us.  We realized we were right in his landing path and had about 20 seconds to paddle out of the way.   

You get so much closer to nature on the water, we drifted right in among the seagulls and they weren't sure what to think of us.  It was so nice being able to take pictures of our water activities without having to worry about getting the camera wet.  When we go on vacation from now on we will take both cameras - for above and below the water.  Yes, there are far more pixels on my more expensive camera but at least now we can take pictures anywhere, not bad for $50!