Adventures in Virginia - MORE other stuff

Our last stop outside of the beach area was the Virginia Aquarium. We actually spent a long time there - almost four hours! Our girls love sea creatures, so they were completely enthralled...

The seal exhibit was actually outside, at the entrance of the aquarium. We loved watching them swim, and Maria loved pretending that she was petting them through the glass.



There were two separate portions of the aquarium - the fresh water portion and the salt water portion. They were set way far apart from each other, so it was quite a hike to get from one to the other. It was a beautiful walk though, through a marsh area with tons of look-out spots (like the one below) and lots of info about plants and wildlife in the marsh.


Lou found a hawk circling, saw it rest in a tree, and we all got to see it through one of those look-out binocular thingys.

This was part of the walk along the marsh. A replica of what a hut built on the marsh would look like way back when people used to live in them.

Maria inside the hut. Nice bed, eh?

Another one of those exhibits like they had at the zoo, where there is a crawl space and a plastic bubble where you can stand up and be "in" the exhibit. In this case, Maria (if you can see her here, sticking out her tongue...) was inside the aquarium.

They had a whole aviary section, which was really neat. We even got to see the workers feed the nasty grubs and fish to the various kinds of birds. There were some everyday birds there, like ducks, and this turkey - Thanksgiving, anyone?

And there were funky birds that I have never seen before, like this duck with an electric blue beak. Yes, that is the ACTUAL color. Weird, huh?

This is kind of a funky picture, but it was really dark in where they had the sharks and sea turtles. This is Maria reaching up to "touch" one of the sea turtles. I've seen these before (one time was while Lou and I were snorkeling!), but they always amaze me with how graceful and beautiful they look while they swim around.

And this was one of the coolest parts, where you got to pet a sting ray! They had a whole pool where you could put your hand in and try to touch one of the dozen or so stingrays that they had there. I always thought stingrays were dangerous, but according to the workers there, they are actually pretty docile (they even feed them by hand, which we also got to watch), as long as you don't touch their tails and/or barbs. It was actually not easy to feel one, because they swim very fast. We all got to touch one though - they were pretty slimy, but it was a really cool experience.