Road Trip part 2:: The Aquarium

The Georgia Aquarium is AH-MAZING. That is pretty much all I can say. But I will elaborate since this is a blog, sorry.

The layout is great because you don't have to do the exhibits in any certain order, read:: you don't get stuck behind that guy that reads every plaque and won't let anyone else in to see. When you go into the aquarium you are in a big open space and all around you are themed "rooms" to go explore as you wish.

We choose the touch tanks first. This area had low open tanks that everyone could just reach into and touch whatever happened to swim by. I thought my 2 almost 3 year old would LOVE this, turns out it just scared her. In her defense, the first tank was sting rays and sharks (tiny cute sharks). She warmed up to the idea by the time we got to the anemone tank, apparently squiggly pink things are always okay.

Then we headed to the amazon. River fish are big! This is the part that had the albino gators. They were so neat, the reason I have zero pictures is because my child was terrified of them. Turns out she knows Washburns never like gators.

 

 

Our next area was for the sea life that enjoyed the cold. Artic crabs, Octopi, Beluga Whales, and Penguins!!

 These freaked me right out, but Wesley loved the way the carefully kept eating the "marshmallows" (some kind of white sea tubey thing)

 I love this picture, but I think we were frustrating that poor octopus. She really thought she was going to get us at any moment.

Wesley could have stayed in the whale room all day. She adores them. By the end of the day we had been 4 times and she knew all four of their names.

This was such a sweet moment. Wesley just got up next to the little sleepy penguin and was talking directly to him. He just kept blinking at us like "Seriously, I am so tired."

I have no pictures from our next area because they weren't allowed. We had tickets to the dolphin show. I thought Wesley would love a dolphin show. Not so much. It was like a play with a ship, a sea monster and a prince. The dolphins save the day of course, but only after lots of thunder, lightning and fire. She was terrified. She wanted to leave the entire time (30 mins) and it wasn't allowed. She had to make it through. I tried bribing, soothing, threatening, feeding....it didn't matter, she wanted out. We did make it through and after it was over she said she loved it, through tears. She even picked a dolphin as her one treat at the end of the day. She will tell you that was her favorite thing she saw at the aquarium.


Back to the fish. Big fish. Length of a school bus big. Meet the whale shark. My favorite of the day.

Too cool. And, as it turns out, super sweet. The whale shark is very docile, mainly because their throat is the diameter of a ping pong ball, so that's the biggest size fish they can eat. His much smaller cousin, the tiger shark, can dislocate his jaw when he eats, which makes him one of the deadliest.

  

The final exhibit was the tropical waters/coral reef sea life. The first hallway was really dark so that you can see the phosphorescent jelly fish. I hate jelly fish, but you could not help seeing these particular jelly fish as beautiful.

 

We wrapped up our day relaxing in front of this:

Not bad, eh?

I have left so much out, these were just the high points. To say the least, I highly recommend this as a destination for all ages. And Atlanta is only 6 hours away. It was a very easy road trip and I thought it was wonderful, I hope the other road trippers felt the same way. I sure enjoyed their company!