The Tentacles exhibit
Saturday June 21st 2014, 10:59 pm
Filed under: Family,Life,Wildlife

Our one-year membership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium has five weeks left on it and we’d wanted to see their Tentacles exhibit while it was still on.

This morning: “Do you want to go?”

“Sure!”

“What time?”

“Let me get this load out of the washer and we need to fill the car.”

And then, wild and crazy young things that we are, we threw a few cans of fruit juice in the car and took off down the coast. Got some serious blankie knitting done while he drove.

The GPS on his phone was misbehaving so we used mine, knowing there had been road construction. But his is the one that has a charger in the car, so I was down to only getting a few pictures once we got there.

Nautilus can naut(tell)ilii.

Sardines are the silver jewelry of the sea.

We watched a cuttlefish that kept pulsing dark purple in waves down its body, S-curving around a lighter almost yellow at its edges and in time to the waves of the water, the darker area matching the (lava rocks?) at the bottom of the display. There was a white anemone nearby and hiding in it another cuttlefish had gone white to match. Put a color or pattern next to them and watch them change to try to vanish into it to prey and not to be prey.

Richard got some pictures I’ll have to share later of the horned and tufted puffins–I was delighted to be within inches of some of the birds that our daughter saw on a recent boat ride in Alaska.

But quite a few people in the crowd around us cracked up when I mentioned that the tufted puffins looked like Donald Trump’s hair, they really  do.

We drove through the artichoke fields of Castroville on the way home and found ourselves a farmstand and came away with the very freshest and a jar of their artichoke marinara sauce. It was clear the place had seen many a tourist, in that there was a large sign showing how to eat their crop–thistle show’em.

We came home too tired to cook. Tomorrow is soon enough.

 


2 Comments so far
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Sounds like a good way to spend a few hours.

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 06.22.14 @ 7:28 am

What a lovely trip! Thanks for sharing it with us. The Knight and I both love aquariums; I should plan a road trip!

Comment by Channon 06.22.14 @ 6:49 pm



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