Aquarium of the Pacific

Tatum and the seals

There is a wonderful aquarium in Long Beach.  We met Anna and the boys there today for some sea life fun :)

The morning was rough, we found some post storm issues around the house and had to take care of that before we could leave.  It put us out the door a little behind schedule.  The pool over flowed and Rob's car got some hail dents, that was the worst of the problems we had.  Around the valley people had a lot bigger problems, with mudslides, being stuck in their cars, losing power and water and roads and businesses closed.  We are supposed to have an el nino winter and after the drought and the fires I suspect this will not but the last of this kind of thing we see this winter.

Anyway, we finally made it out of the house and headed down the road.  The drive there was smooth and we were excited to get there and start the fun.

The aquarium was great.  It had lots of interactive displays and lots of opportunities to touch the animals.  They had wonderful keeper chats.  Did you know that sometimes sea otters turn purple from eating too many sea urchins?

fun at the aquarium

Basically we had an awesome time!  We did lose Deo once, but the security guys found him quickly.  I did get pooped on by the lorikeets, twice.  They had a handy sink and soap so that was okay too.

We got to watch the sharks be fed, and the seals and sea lions.  We saw dragons and jellies and fish fish fish.  We got to touch sharks and rays and jellies and star fish.  The cafe was good and the weather was perfect.

Lorikeet feeding

more fun

taking a nap

After the aquarium we walked up to this cute little light house (in honor of our light housing friends in MD)

lighthouse

taking a break

Long Beach was delightful.  I am looking forward to going back.

Unfortunately our trip home wasn't so awesome.  It took forever, the traffic was horrible, we took some wrong turns and did some unintentional francising.  Ugh!

We got home around 8, started making dinner and then watched Inside Out.  

All in all a really good day, with some big hiccups along the way.