Quick Road Trip

Saturday, November 17
We packed up the car and headed to Oklahoma City so we could go to the zoo and do a little Christmas shopping. We've been wanting to go to the zoo ever since I found out last May that they have some cuttlefish from the Tennessee Aquarium. The kids' favorite part of the zoo visit was getting to pose with all of the animal statues that they have around the park.

Sunday, November 18
Since we were driving by it anyway, we decided to get a closer look at the state capitol. It's still weird to see it with a dome because growing up, it had the distinction of being the only state capitol building without a dome. On the drive home, we got to experience a classic Oklahoma sunset.

SeaLife Aquarium

We took a trip to SeaLife Aquarium today. We hadn't really planned on going to this aquarium with so many others around, but I heard they had a cephalopod (octopus and cuttlefish) exhibit and knew we would want to go.

We were very disappointed that the cephalopod exhibit was closed because the octopus wasn't feeling well. We mentioned our disappointment to some employees since there weren't any signs telling us about it, and no one mentioned it when we bought our tickets – especially since that's why we were there and probably wouldn't have bought tickets if we had known. They were nice enough, though, to give us tickets so we could come back on a day when the exhibit is open.

Despite the disappointment, it was neat to see a lot of the other sea creatures they had, and Mara and Lani had a lot of tunnel to crawl into and get right in the middle of the exhibits.

If you look closely, you can see the girls are looing at a clown fish in the below picture.

Road Trip: Day 6 (Georgia Aquarium, World of Coke & 4th of July)

Today was the day Mara had been looking forward to the most on the trip. Today we went to the Georgia Aquarium, the only place in the U.S. that is home to whale sharks (and mantra rays). I made the mistake of telling Mara a couple of months ago that she can go swimming with them after she turns 12, and she has already been planning a return trip here in five years. All before she even got here.

So, once we were finally in the doors, our first stop was the Ocean Voyager exhibit. This is one of the windows on the way to the large viewing area.

Then, we had to go through a tunnel where all of the sea creatures swam over you.

And then we finally made it to the viewing area where Mara was enraptured by all of the creatures and kept asking the aquarium employee questions about them.

From there, we went to see the belugas and were surprised to find out that we had seen three of the four before. I knew that we had seen Beethoven, the one on the far right in the picture below, before because he was born at SeaWorld San Antonio in 1992 and was back there for a little bit to help SeaWorld's breeding program. Come to find out, Maris, the one who sadly lost a calf earlier this year, was also at SeaWorld in 2009 while the Georgia Aquarium constructed its new dolphin show area. The youngest of the belugas (Qinu) was also born at SeaWorld San Antonio and was one of the ones we watched perform with her mom in 2008.

Mara got to touch an anemone, which stuck to her fingers when she touched it.

We stopped by to see the penguins, and Mara was able to pop her head up in the middle of the exhibit. (It was too tall to be able to see Jack in there.)

It was then time for us to go to the dolphin show. They don't allow you to take pictures during it, but I snapped this picture of Mara and me before the show started.

After the show, we stopped to watch the dolphins swimming around in their tank.

And then Mara and Jack stuck their hand in a tank, trying to touch some rays and bonnethead sharks (cousins of hammerheads).

We visited TJ, the loggerhead turtle who we saw featured on the show Ocean Mysteries.

Based on talks with staff at the Tennessee Aquarium, we thought we were going to get to see more cuttlefish at this aquarium, but sadly, they had an issue with them and didn't have any on exhibit.

We couldn't leave without taking one more peak at the Ocean Voyager exhibit. I do think the whale shark is close to moving over the killer whale as Mara's favorite animal.

(I wish I had gotten this picture when we were there earlier in the day because no one else was around. Mara's in between the two people who have their arms up.)

After the aquarium, we walked across Pemberton Place to go to the World of Coca-Cola where we saw the vault that house the formula and discovered the secret ingredient (us). We even got to pose with a replica of the Olympic torch and taste different Coca-Cola drinks from around the world as well as get our own bottle to take home.

After going back to the hotel for dinner, we headed back to Pemberton Place to watch the fireworks from Centennial Olympic Park.

See more pictures here.