On to the aquarium . . .

Earlier this year I had contact with the PR people at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach; they were interested in me doing some work for them until their budget got cut. So I called my contact and she was more than happy to get me and Spencer in free for the day. She took him right to the shark-petting tank and he got to touch bamboo sharks like this one. This was definitely the highlight of the trip for him.



Luckily we hit the stingray tank right at feeding time.

They also had "real" sharks of maneater size. Our hostess made sure we were in the right spot to watch when they were fed. Spencer would have watched them all day.
He liked the 3-D movie glasses so much he smuggled them out of the theater.
They have a big outdoor cage housing dozens of Australian birds called lorikeets that will land on your arm to lick nectar out of a cup.

We stayed at the aquarium for a full four hours and also saw sea lions, sea otters, a sea turtle, poisonous sea snakes, and giant spider crabs. They also had these shark egg cases with the top cut off so you could see the baby sharks wiggling around inside. Both of us really loved everything there. I recommend the aquarium even if you have full price.

From there we drove to the airport and got dinner at In and Out Burger. Traffic was so light we even got on an earlier flight, so the sun was still up when we landed in Salt Lake City. (Spencer was mad that he missed the weekly trip to Grandma Cathy's :).

I can't wait to take one of the girls on my next trip. They were both very kind to defer to Spencer on this trip since it was to a spot near his favorite attractions.