Seattle Aquarium

Rick and I spent last weekend in Seattle. Valentine's Day was our 28th wedding anniversary. We went to the Seattle Aquarium on Saturday. We got there about fifteen minutes after it opened. It's not a huge place, and I'd say it takes less than two hours to see everything. We were in and out within an hour and a half. It was good because by the time we left, the line to get in was crazy long. I couldn't believe it. I'm sure it was a madhouse the rest of the day. 

I had my Canon with me, but I really didn't use it much except for when I went outside. It's funny to see how the majority of people use their cell phones to photograph with. Hardly anyone carries cameras anymore. I ended up using my iPhone 6+ to take most of my indoors pictures. It's hard for me to adjust settings in the darker areas with my big camera.

They had a couple of red octopuses (above), but both were sound asleep when I saw them. I guess they were asleep. Their eyes were closed. Unfortunately, I forgot to take notes the names of other critters I saw. I usually do that, but for some reason I forgot this time.

The sea otters are always my favorite to watch at any aquarium. This isn't a big place, by any means, but they have quite a few sea otters and seals. They're always so comical. Sea otters remind me of Denny sometimes, especially when they're on their back.

I didn't post any pictures of Sea Cucumbers. A guy walked up to me with what looked like a Tupperware container. He said, "Do you want to pet a Sea Cucumber?" I told him no, but I wanted to say, "What kind of sicko are you?" Sea Cucumbers indeed. Slugs. That's all they are. You can call them Sea Cheesecakes for all I care—they're still slugs. Freak.

The aquarium had a lot of tide pools where people could touch the sea creatures. I'm just not into that, although I know kids love it. I had a bad experience as a child when my school took us on a field trip to the Queen Mary. I was totally content just looking at the critters—but no—one of the psycho staff members decided I just had to pick up a starfish. I was little. She grabbed my wrist and literally shoved it into the water, forcing me to pick one up. Scarred me for life. Now mind you, I will pick up a sea critter on my own, especially at the beach. The condition is that I do it on my own. Force my hand again and you might lose an eye ... or two.

The photo above is of salmon. This was a cool feature because it was directly over your head. Below are some jellyfish. They had them in a hallow arch. I tried to get a picture of that, but there were too many people walking in and out of it. There were different colored lights that came on, so the jellyfish went from being clearish-white to bright blue, green, pink, etc.

Below is the crazy line to get in. The aquarium opened at 9:30am. This photograph was taken about 11am. I guess Valentine's Day weekend is pretty busy in Seattle regardless where you go. Even so, I'm glad we got in when we did. I couldn't imagine being in there with all these people.