If you do love whales like me, the Saint Lawrence Seaway near Tadoussac, Quebec is one of the best places to see them. In July and August, you can see humpback, fin, blue (just the largest animal to have ever lived on the planet Earth), and beluga whales. They feed on the krill where the fresh water fjord meets the salt water. We did see a beluga at a distance from the shore, but June is still a little early in the season. Not that I actually want this dynamic to change, but for the life of me, I absolutely cannot fathom why more Michiganders don't head this way in the summer. The number of Michigan plates we saw after Toronto? Zero.
Here is what the first part of the trip looks like on Google Maps. Next, we took a car ferry across the Saint Lawrence Seaway (actually very inexpensive) and headed another three-and-a-half hours east to the Gaspésie National Park where we climbed Mont Albert. It was a 10-mile loop hike gaining almost 3,000 vertical feet. As you can probably tell, I live for this kind of stuff. Anyway, it was fun and the perfect way to put some punctuation on the end of the school year.
Anyway, when you click on the link, you will notice that there are 27 different pages ~ each with more than 20 articles, so the good news is that you've got options. Next, notice that for almost all of the articles, it estimates how long it will take you to read it. Most are 20 to 25 minutes. Some are 15 minutes. Others are over an hour. I'm asking you to read a minimum of 45 minutes combined for both blogs, so if you accomplish that requirement all in one single article, that's totally fine. If you need to read three fifteen minutes articles, that's fine. However you slice it up is up to you.
In terms of the writing, I'm looking for 300 words for each blog: a short 150-word paragraph of summary and a short 150-word paragraph of your personal response. If you decide to "kill two birds with one stone" and read one of the articles that is 45 minutes or longer, then just do one longer 600-word entry. Two more things: there are a few pieces on this site that are more on the adult side of things. I'm asking you to use your best judgement and go with something that you would say is appropriate for school. PLEASE clearly label your entries, so I can easily figure out which is blog #4 and which is blog #5. Finally, you do not have to do these at the same time or in the same comment. Do one now and one later if you like.