One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

We drove about an hour on Tuesday morning to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Maryland to see the National Aquarium. It was a very fun excursion. We decided to go see it instead of leaving town. It's a pricey thing to do, but we felt it was worth it. They have exhibits showing what lives in water as it moves over land, and then eventually to ocean. There were plenty of beautiful tropical fish, and a great shark exhibit too. There was a diver in one section of the shark enclosure (it had a portion blocked off from the sharks) and B-man was more scared of the diver's mysterious legs in the water, then the huge sharks swimming around. There weren't a lot of hands on touching of fish, but they did bring out some animals periodically for the kids to see up close and ask questions about.

B-man loved the dolphin show the most. Who can blame him? They are so impressive. His favorite part of the show was when the dolphin jumped out of the water to touch a balloon that was suspended high above the tanks. We all loved the jumps and tricks that they did. We also made sure to steer clear of the splash zone, and we stayed nice and dry during the show. The thing that B-man loved best after the dolphin show, was watching the fish be fed. We first watched them feed the rays and some other fish. We then literally followed the divers into the elevator for their next feeding. Of course B-man was talking to them the entire ride in the elevator, and we had to stay and watch them feed the fish at the Atlantic reef exhibit. They would wave and try and show us what they were doing. It was fun to watch them and see where some of the fish were hiding. B-man loved every minute of it. And he talked to them again when they got out of the water and into the elevators. We finished the day in the Australia exhibit. We saw huge bats, and we got spit at by some of the fish. We also saw some crocodiles being very active and eating things. All of the volunteers kept commenting about how active the animals were and how lucky we were! I love coming on days where the animals are being cooperative! When we finally couldn't walk anymore we made it back to the car, and made the drive home. It was a great day!

***Funny story of the day... (because there always has to be one) We parked on the seventh floor of the parking garage, but unfortunately the elevator was broken. No big deal going down, but going back to the car it took a lot more energy. That gave us more time to notice our surroundings. We were in a very dingy, slightly scary stairwell. It was like a scene from too many movies, and both M and I commented on it. I am very glad there were no bad guys trying to chase me for several reasons. The biggest being that I am not very fast and they would have caught me or shot me for sure. As a bonus, when we got to our car it still smelled like lunch. We'd had an egg salad picnic (a very Linford/Clark thing to do) in the car before going into the aquarium. It was only about 28 degrees, but somehow the smell still managed to permeate the car.