Aquarium of the Pacific

Terry came back up to take the girls out to the Aquarium of the Pacific the next week. The aquarium was supposed to open at 9, so I figured that Terry should be up in Riverside by 8 so that we can go somewhat close to when it opened but we ended up deciding for him to be in Riverside by 9 so that he would miss the worst of the morning traffic...it didn't really work out that way. He didn't get into Riverside until after 10 because of the awful traffic. We didn't hit the road again until nearly 10:30. By the time we got out to Long Beach, it was basically lunch time. 

We stopped by to get Hawaiian food at the L&L before heading into the aquarium. By that time, we actually got there, it was 1:pm!

Christian and I came here shortly after it opened some 25 years ago. I think we must have had some company party here or something when I worked for Isuzu. It was pretty nice, if a little small and limited. Definitely not as nice as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but decent enough.

We had a pretty nice time, but after 25 years of the riff-raff of the area coming in here though, has not done it any favors. A lot of the aquarium walls were dirty with slimy fingers and scratched up by jerks should never have even been there.

We were still able to enjoy most of the displays though.

The lighting was a bit of a challenge to take pictures on top of all the other problems.

Somehow the lighting outside was almost worse than inside!

Because of the expected traffic going home and because he still had to drive home to San Diego, Terry wanted to leave and we were back on the road again by 4:pm. Catalina definitely would not have worked out. I drove us out to Long Beach so I suggested that he nap on the way home but he just chatted with us most of the way since the girls would be leaving back to school soon. Caitlyn, however, slept through most of it!