thursday
Today we visited the South Florida Museum, Aquarium and Planetarium. It was the home of Snooty, a 69 year old manatee whom everyone loved. But Snooty recently died - the day after his birthday in July. So it was too bad we couldn't see him. The kids were very enchanted with seeing the other manatees, even though they aren't as friendly as Snooty ever was. Snooty was rare in that he actually lived there, had been raised as a pet and couldn't manage life in the wild. The manatees that are there now are being rehabilitated and someday will be released so the staff doesn't want them to get that used to humans. Besides the aquarium and museum of natural history they had a display of the 50 Greatest National Geographic photos - all blown up very large. I especially liked that. And we saw a few videos about dark matter, dark energy and the universe and planets in the planetarium - pretty neat - looked like 3D above us.
Waiting for me to get done looking at the photos - I was much more interested in looking at every photo in detail than they were.
I really liked this photo. At first I couldn't figure out how it was taken.
Manatees look like big gray balloons.
Enjoying the manatees. The manatee called Gayle was constantly swimming and using the others as spring boards as she circled the tank. They didn't seem to mind. They are very lazy.
On the way out - posing.
Waiting for me to get done looking at the photos - I was much more interested in looking at every photo in detail than they were.
I really liked this photo. At first I couldn't figure out how it was taken.
Manatees look like big gray balloons.
Enjoying the manatees. The manatee called Gayle was constantly swimming and using the others as spring boards as she circled the tank. They didn't seem to mind. They are very lazy.
On the way out - posing.