A Grand Day Out

We took a day trip on Saturday to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, where we met up with Nana and Papa.  Though we are members of the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Point Defiance has an aquarium as well, and that aquarium has something that even the Seattle Aquarium does not have.

Sharks.

Yes, that is Tad and Ane up front.  Every Saturday, the aquarium feeds the sharks at 11 am, and we were there to watch it.  To say that Tad enjoyed it is an understatement.  He was transfixed.

He just sat down in front of the glass, watching.  He didn’t squeal with delight, or point and chatter about the different kinds of sharks (though he could identify them when we asked).  He just sat there and soaked it all in.  He was completely in the moment.

Ane liked seeing the sharks, but she enjoyed it more for her brother’s sake than for her own.

The aquarium houses a sandtiger shark, a lemon shark, some nurse sharks, a few sandbar sharks, a couple of blacktip reef sharks, and one wobbegong shark.  The wobbegong shark, being of the carpet shark variety (meaning that it stays near or on the ocean floor), was patiently waiting in one spot to be fed and was the last shark served (the sharks are fed via long poles that allow them to take their food right off it, with each shark getting a designated meal just for them), and we were almost the only people left watching, since the crowd had dispersed after the bigger sharks had eaten.

Tad made an attempt to become one with the wobbegong shark.

As the Webmaster put it, “I think he’s found his happy place.”

There were a couple of other smaller sharks in other areas – a bamboo shark in a smaller tank, and some dogfish sharks in the North Pacific part of the aquarium.  But we came back to this viewing area three different times, because each time that we convinced Tad that it was time to walk away and see something else, he would ask about 10 minutes later, “We go see sharks?”

But we did see other animals in the zoo.  The other big draw at Point Defiance right now are the 8 week old Sumatran tiger cubs.  Ane was especially thrilled about this, even though the first two times we checked in on them, they were sleeping with their mom.

Ane insisted that we go back to see them when they were awake, and since we were letting Tad check in on the sharks and the tigers were nearby, we did.  So she saw them awake and frolicking, though I couldn’t get a good picture of them at that point – they weren’t near the glass.

Ane also loved the new clouded leopards.

Like most girls, she has a love of furry and cute animals.

Rerun was a good baby throughout this trip, though he has quite a need to be grabby.

He was riding in the Baby Bjorn, facing forward when he was awake, and at one point, I discovered that he’d grabbed on and was trying to eat a 8 or 9 year old girl’s long curly black ponytail.  Her parents were laughing as I extricated Rerun’s fists from her hair and apologized.  But generally, he loved watching what his siblings were up to.

Eventually, though, he was good and worn out.

And after such an exciting day at the zoo and aquarium, his siblings agreed and promptly crashed in the minivan on our hour-long drive home.  We give many thanks to Nana and Papa for all the fun, and for joining in all the fun.

It truly was a grand day out.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 1:32 am and is filed under Children, Family, Vacation Tales.
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