Water Animals

Sister and I spent a glorious day in Monterey CA yesterday. Here's how our fun went.

Stop #1
$10 per day parking lot one block from the Aquarium.

Stop #2
Snack shop across the street from the Aquarium for a ham and cheese croissant and a ham and cheese quiche. A warm and delicious breakfast for a day of water animal viewing.

Stop #3
Aquarium ticket taker man.

Stop #4
Restrooms

Stop #5
Otter Days information table. The posters and toy otters were not free. To get one you had to answer all of the questions on an activity sheet. We think we were older than the target audience by about 20 years, plus the questions involved reading. We did not get a poster or toy otter.

Stop #6
Kelp Forest and other fishy points in the main building. We had a blast watching the school old sardines swim in a circle. Tammy loved the Sea Otters. One was grooming and looked uber cute. We also liked the little beach birds in the Nature Center.

Stop #7
A bench outside. We needed a rest. We watched the bay and posted on each others facebook pages from our mobile internet devices.

Stop #8
The Secret Lives of Sea Horses. This was the main attraction for us. I'll tell you the big secret about sea horses. It's that the males get impregnated by the females. The males are the ones who give birth to many many many little sea horses from a kangaroo like pouch. Then the female comes back and impregnates him again. The sea horses use the model of create millions of babies so that a few will survive by chance. The rest get eaten. Have you seen a baby sea horse? They are tiny! Really tiny. If you were a whale or leopard shark and you sucked in a big gulp of ocean water, you wouldn't even know there were baby sea horses in it. They are that tiny. And so adorable!

Stop #9
Wild About Otters. It was the last weekend for the river otter exhibit. I'm not sure where the river otters are going, but apparently they have some where else to be.

Stop #10
Penguins. We couldn't go to the Aquarium and not say hello to the penguins. They would have been insulted.

Stop #11
A board game where we each were a hermit crab and had to spin the wheel to find out how many spaces we could move. For most of the game we landed on boring spaces, we didn't get eaten or rescued. Near the end, Tammy was just taking the lead when a human picked her up and the space said "game over". I won!

This reminds me of a fun game we played in the sea horses exhibit. We had to camouflage our sea horse to match his surroundings. Tammy was doing a great job changing the colors and spines on the sea horse when poof! A fish came by and ate it. We had no idea that was going to happen. After failing a second time, we were ready for the fish. I said "this is scary". She said "I'm stressed out". We were so nervous for our sea horse. We didn't want to kill another one. He lived! The game lit up and celebrated our job well done. We walked away while we were ahead. Phew. We went to the aquarium for a relaxing day and got stressed out over a little video game.

Stop #12
The gift shop. This is always relaxing for us. We found a few items to purchase and left in pursuit of a meal.

Stop #13
Amarin Thai Cuisine. We sat. We dined. We reminisced about all the cute little critters we saw.

Stop #14
Strolling down Cannery Row on a mission for a candied apple, I was distracted by the sock store. You should see the fun knee highs I got! We picked the Avalanche Apple which was covered in caramel, rice krispies, mini marshmallows, and drizzles of white and dark chocolate. They sliced it for us and we walked, talked, and ate our apple. Walking while eating sugar negates the calorie intake. Tammy didn't buy this theory.

Stop #15
The big grassy park at the end of Cannery Row. We watched otters, seals, birds, and kayakers out in the bay.

Stop #16
The car. We headed back up 101.

Stop #17
The Gilroy Factory outlets. Is it possible to not stop?

Stop #18
The couch. What a great day!