A Day at the Tennessee Aquarium

This has been an awesome week! Marc had another day of no school and no studying, so we decided to take advantage of it and get away for the day. We tried to look for something to do inside, another heat wave heading our way. We decided to go to Chattanooga...quick ride and lots to do!

We started off with lunch at one of my favorite sub shops in Chattanooga, Ankar's Hoagies. They recently opened one a couple of blocks from the aquarium, so it worked out perfectly! After our quick lunch, we walked back down to pick up our tickets.

We started off with the River Journey building. We went to the seahorse exhibit first and checked out all the beautiful coral.

Coral

Little Seahorse

This guy was attached to the side of the tank. (Patrick!!!)

More colorful coral

Next we went to the Delta Swamp area of the aquarium. 


They had lots of interesting and colorful fish.


This little guy was swimming all over the place. He was moving so quickly, most of the pictures I took of him came out blurry.


These alligators were so still that several kids made comments that they must've been plastic. You had to look really closely to see them breathing. I didn't take a picture of it, but there was a sign above them that said not to life children over the side of the case. What makes me thing some idiot tried to do just that?

Turtles, turtles, and more turtles!

After leaving River Journey, we went right over to Ocean Journey. It was starting to sprinkle a little bit, and we didn't want to get wet.

Leopard Stingrays

Hyacinth Macaws

When we went to the stingray petting area, the lady that was leading it gave me a raw shrimp to feed to the stingrays. She showed me how to place it between my fingers and told me to put it pretty deep in the water. While I was waiting for the stingrays to come back around, one of the sharks stopped right in front of my hand and watched pretty hard. I didn't know it was a shark, so I kept my hand in the water. About that time, the lady told me to take my hand out of the water because the shark would bite it. Eeek! I tossed the shrimp back into the water and made my way to the butterfly garden. That was enough for me!

Nice stingray...NOT a shark!

The butterfly garden was pretty boring. We've been before when it was covered with butterflies, but most of them were at the top of the dome this time. We've had better luck with them in the Spring, so maybe it was too hot for them.

Next up was Penguin Rock. Marc loves penguins, and he would've been perfectly happy to stay there all day. They were very cool to watch.

Penguin Rock

Getting ready to dive into the water!

Posing for the cameras

Then we went over to the jellyfish exhibit.

Upside Down Jellyfish

More jellyfish...

After the aquarium, we went to the Rib and Loin, our favorite Chattanooga barbeque restaurant. I got a pulled pork plate, and Marc got ribs. It was great, as always!

After our little getaway, we decided it was time to head back home. We were tired, and it was getting close to eviction night on Big Brother! (Priorities!)