Big day today – we got up and out of the house by 8:40 which didn’t sound too hard to me until I had a 7-yo involved. We were on our way to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey and wanted to be sure to get there in time for the sea otter feeding. We made it, and in addition to feeding they were working on training the sea otters basically for stimulation for them (the otters, not the trainers). I guess the otters can actually get sick without the intellectual stimulation.
The jellies (they’re not jellyfish…) were a big hit. The Outer Bay, too. We spent the whole morning, went out for luch and then went back in for another session. One extra-special thing – a giant octopus was actually out moving around it it’s tank. We’ve been there so many times and the octopus usually sits (?) shyly in a corner – they are nocturnal after all. There’s a fun touch pool where you get to handle all kinds of sea creatures – urchins, sea cucumbers, starfish, lots of things I can’t spell. Once we hit the tired bar, we left and had another snack, then went to Lover’s Point for some tide pooling.
At Lover’s Point there turned out to be lots of rocks to climb on and hermit crabs to catch and play with. After a couple hours of fun, we had dinner at Lattiudes and then went looking for the sunset. We wound up at Asilomar State Beach where there were lots of fun things washed up on shore, surfers, dogs, people and waves to race up and down the beach. Jordan kept telling me “come on, Rick, it’s not very cold” but I didn’t bite.
After a fairly amazing amount of time, as the sun was setting, the inevitable hypothermia hit, so we piled in the car, covered Jordan with every available warm thing and turned the heat up high. About 5 minutes later he was asleep until we got home. Too tired to bathe, Dena got to sleep with Mr. Sand Monster.