A Better Kind of Fish

I got up at a reasonable time today...not as early as I wanted to, but not slothlike.  So, after the morning oatmeal and coffee, I decided that today would be a good day to go to the aquarium.  North Carolina has 4 state aquariums, the closest one to where I am is the one at Pine Knoll Shores.

Let me just say that going on a beach vacation after Labor Day is da bomb!  Parking is easy, no lines for tickets, no screaming kiddies... So I decided to also pay the extra 3 bucks to see the bird show.  More on that later.

There are more than fishies at the aquarium.  There are turtles

Aren't they cute?  They had some sea turtles too, but I didn't get any good pictures of them :(.  We also had some snakes

These are corn snakes and I thought they were actually really pretty.  I skipped the scary poisonous ones.  Since we're on reptiles

A happy lil gator sunning on a rock. We also have the traditional ocean dwellers here

 Sharks and Lionfish and Seahorses, oh MY!  Poor lil seahorses, I think I blinded them with my flash. I put them into hiding.

They have a couple of touch tanks, one with rays, which was not lit very well, and one with Horseshoe crabs sharing space with Hermit crabs.  One hermit crab kept hitching a ride on his buddy, which I thought was funny.  Another horseshoe speeds by... Speaking of crabs

Oh come on...I had to!  One of my favorite photos I have of my mother, is her doing this same pose.

The bird show was pretty cool too and totally worth the extra 3 bucks.  Couple of highlights:

That's a great horned  owl

And a red tailed hawk. After, I went outside to the wetlands exhibit, which was cool...but not photo friendly.  I saw some herons and Ibis, but through telescopes.  I wanted to do the half mile nature hike, but got turned around by a swarm of giant mosquitoes.

I headed back to my condo as I had forgotten my camera card in the netbook (my camera does have some memory without the card...but I had to delete some less than awesome photos in the aquarium when I ran out of memory. It was WAY past lunchtime by that point and I was starving.  I started driving around and unwittingly ended up at The Sanitary Fish Market and Restaurant.  I don't know why I was there...the last time I ate there the food was awful and overpriced.  I continue to be underwhelmed, but they did have Yuengling on tap and I had forgotten how awesome their hushpuppies were.  I had scallops in lobster sauce over linguini.  It wasn't bad...it just wasn't great.  Still, the atmosphere was neat and my waitress was awesome.  I walked off the overeating pasta bloat by wandering around the shops along the waterfront in Morehead City.

I had forgotten a couple of essentials (of course), so I stopped at the local Wallyworld and headed home.  I was getting a little tired, but I hadn't been to the beach yet today...so I pushed myself to go for a walk, and I was super glad I did.  There was a lovely breeze and the tide was coming in, so we had a bit of surf.

The beach was almost entirely deserted...there were a handful of surfers down near the decrepit fishing pier, so I headed the opposite direction.  It was perfect.

I walked about a half mile before it started to get pretty dark, so I had to head back. 

Last photo before it got too dark.  Sooooo pretty.  

I haven't really been hungry since that huge, late lunch so I've had some cheese and crackers with my wine.  I think tomorrow will be my beach day, maybe break in the afternoon and go to Ft. Fisher during the high sun time so I don't fry.  Thursday will be Shackleford Banks and I am determined to see horses this time!