Weekend at the Coast Part 2: The 4th!

The 4th of July saw Heather and I wake up mega early to make our way to the Oregon Coast Aquarium for the new Swampland exhibit.

I adore aquariums, I saw the Oddwater exhibit they had two years ago and it was freaking amazing. It featured some of the oceans most interesting fish with blown glass installations made to look like coral, plant life, and shells. I never wanted to leave, the petting pool had glass doubloons and starfish, and real live baby sharks.

Now if you never saw Oddwater, Swampland might be kinda cool, there was a huge anaconda, alligators, a ginormous snapping turtle. But since I did see Oddwater it was a bit of a let down, but really you can't compete, and I do really enjoy the Swampland art.

The rest of the Aquarium was almost as disappointing, in the above picture I'm in the shark tube which was disappointingly empty compared to last time. Several exhibits had listless looking animals, and I saw several dead shrimp, and a lot of the exhibits had info next to them that didn't have the animal they were talking about in it.

My Medusa jellyfish never disappoint though. I love them soooo much!

Coral painting, I blend in.

I'm glad I got some pictures of this dress cause it died while wearing it this day.

Heather found her favorite creature.

We ate lunch, this place had waitresses that took your order, it was crazy! What aquarium does that?

The door handles were shaped like plant life, and little creatures, it was awesome!

Heather and I pretending to be daring swamp researchers.

She's gonna need help soon.

Picture outside the aquarium, it'd be cool if it was a swamp, you know tie everything together. But it's a marsh.

After the Aquarium we went to the Hatfield Marine Science Center it's free to get in with donation and has all sorts of cool science inspired games to play.

Heather found her own Yellow Submarine.

Okay I've been telling people for years about the growing jellyfish problem for years. They don't have enough predators, they breed like mad rabbits, and some species are damn near immortal. I think they're cool to look at and all but we need to take weed whackers to them.

Okay let's face it, that sign would not be there unless someone in the past was stupid enough to do this.

I liked this rockfish, he might be a good inspiration for a makeup look.

After that we called it a day and went back home where dad made us kebabs, and grilled corn. When it got dark we bought fireworks and set them off in the front yard. But I only really care about sparklers!

We bundled up to go down to the beach.

I borrowed my dads coat, and Catherines hat. Word to your mother...

We were told we could see a bunch of people lighting off fireworks down there. But either it was too early, or nobody wanted to, cause it was pretty dead out there.

It's a little late, but I hope everyone else had a great 4th of July as well.