Spring Break Day 5--Monterey Bay Aquarium

We spent most of the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  It is a fabulous, fabulous aquarium! The variety of creatures, the way they are on exhibit, the whole experience is really wonderful.  We arrived only just after they opened, and we were there until nearly four with a brief break for some lunch.  We watched them feed the penguins and the fish in the kelp bed tank, we saw otters, a tentacle exhibit with octopi and squid, watched bigger fish swim in the deep ocean exhibit, and got to touch all sorts of little creatures.  Once again, I was amazed at God's creations--He really is imaginative.  I felt like we saw variations on a theme in several places.  God said, "Let's make something with lots of legs," and then made different octopi and squid, all with lots of legs, but all different.  And then He said, "Let's make tangs (a smallish fish)," and then made blue, orange, silver, stripey, and several other colors of tangs.  "Let's made a gelatinous something," brought about jelly fish in varying size, some with long deadly trailing bits and some without.

In addition to what we saw in tanks, we also watched some birds that the aquarium keeps because they have been injuring in some way and can't live in the wild.  One of the birds was a one-eyes Western Snowy Plover.  Though a small bird, the docent told us he is a bully.  He picks fights with the other birds, many much larger than he is, all the times.  He's apparently got short guy syndrome. Here he is.

He might look cute, but don't underestimate this bird.

He's fierce!

It was all just really great.  We liked it, one and all.  Kent and my attention span are certainly greater than the kids, but we all enjoyed being there.

We were all waiting for the penguin feeding.  Just before it was to begin, a volunteer asked us all to sit on the ground so we could all see.  It was funny to sit on the ground with kids and adults, but the feeding was super interesting and we could see everything because no one was standing in front of us.

There are several spots along the ocean side of the aquarium where you can go out and see if anything is swimming past. 

When we stepped out, there was an otter frolicking just below us. 

The Kelp Forest tank.

It was enormous and super cool.

We watched the fish in this one being fed too.

 

  

This woman is a volunteer who drives down from San Francisco

 twice a month so she can feed the fish.

She spends two and a half hours in the car each way so she can spend 

fifteen minutes in the tank with the fish.  

She loves it!

 

 

Blythe and an octopus

She's cuter.

There was an exhibit where you could project your face and it would be covered 

by octopus and squid camouflage.

They are weird creatures.

Lots of legs AND they can change color.

These bright silver fish were swimming around and around and around and around and

around and around and around their circular tank as fast as they could.

They were a silver streak.

It was hard to tell one fish from another.

After finishing at the aquarium, we walked across the street to a candy shop.  There were barrels of candy, gum in all sorts of shapes and sizes, a huge variety almost impossible to choose from.  Brandt and Blythe both walked around and around trying to make decisions about what to get and what to pass by.  So many choices!

We got in the car and drove a short way down the coast along Ocean View Blvd., and came upon Lover Point Beach.  There was a place where you could rent bicycles, and Blythe and Brandt begged us to rent a surrey--a multi-person bike with two rows of seats.  I had suggested to Kent we do that before we left for our trip, so we agreed.  As neither Brandt nor Blythe are very tall yet, it was difficult for them to pedal very effectively, so Kent and I did most of the work.  We cycled back towards the aquarium looking at people, the ocean, and animal life along the way.  We stopped to look at sea lions asleep on the beach and learned that they are nocturnal, hence the reason we see them lying around all day.  There was a man along the recreation trail with binoculars and a scope who was talking about the sea lions.  He showed us a brand new baby sea lion, born only two days ago, nestled among the other sea lions.  It was so cute!!!  We turned around after about half a mile and biked back the way we had come.  

 

Brandt was willing to try and look like a whale for one picture.

Blythe was not.

 

 

We went back to where we were staying, put down our stuff, and headed back to the beach.  Someone had constructed a fort with a driftwood and seaweed banner.  It really wasn't warm enough to get in the water, but the kids happily played in the sand as we watched the sun go down again.

We have really liked our time in Monterey and Pacific Grove.  Being by the beach is fantastic, the area is charming, the houses are interesting, and the pace of life seems a bit slower than home.  This is obviously because we are on vacation, but the whole thing has appealed.  We saw a darling house for sale and stopped to get a flyer.  It's on Lighthouse Drive, not too far from the beach, only slightly smaller than our house in Provo, built in 1905 with some really nice built in architectural features.  And the price?  Only $1.4 million.  I'm trying to convince Kent that we should buy it as our second home, you know, for weekend get aways.  Insert eye roll here.  It would be great to live in this area, if the cost of living wasn't so ridiculously high.

Our second home.