The Largest Animals on Earth Were Spied Near Long Beach

The half-year point, where the first six months of the calendar meet the second six months, isn't often celebrated or acknowledged in any real and festive way.

And yet? Once glance around town and things can seem suddenly much bigger at this point, and brighter, hotter, and stronger, too.

Days are often hot as the June 30/July 1 meeting point grows closer, flower blossoms are bursting, stinky plants are growing several inches each day, and ice cream cones are stacked high.

And if you look to the ocean, you might even spy the most sizable animals to ever use the earth as a home address, if your timing is just right.

The timing was perfect, in fact, for a group of whale-seeking adventurers on a Harbor Breeze Cruise over the weekend. For on Sunday, June 27 those biggest-of-the-biggest, the beautiful blues, were spied off the Southern California coast.

"The Blue Whales are HERE!!" trumpeted the company's Facebook page, with the revelation that a quartet of snacking cetaceans were admired from the deck of a boat.

Even if you don't get the chance to blow by some epic blowhole action, the cruises often encounter all sorts of amazing aquatic animals, including those playful, leap-happy, super-curious smarties, the dolphins.

In fact, a Harbor Breeze Cruise came across a "dolphin tri-fecta" over the final weekend of June, with "common dolphins, offshore bottlenose dolphins, and risso dolphins" within sight of the vessel.

Ready to cool down while cruising the ocean, greet the year's mid-point in the major way it should be greeted, and possible "feel a bit blue" with a surprise whale encounter, fingers crossed?

Harbor Breeze Cruises sail out twice each weekday and three times on Saturday (and again on Sunday).

An adult walk-up ticket is $45 on weekdays and $50 on weekends, but you can find online specials here.

Pictured: A blue whale off the coast of Southern California