The Nature Walk of Plagues

I have oodles of pictures to post about my annual beach vacation, but I think I'll start with our afternoon at the aquarium. After what seemed like about five years of renovations, the local aquarium on the island where we stay was finally reopened. I typically don't love aquariums, but given the swirling tropical storm overhead that prevented us from actually being on the beach, we decided to spend an afternoon at the new and improved aquarium.

They definitely did a nice job on the expansion of the aquarium itself. I used to go here almost annually with my family as a kid, so I have some vague recollections of what it used to look like. But, now there's a nice large ocean tank with plenty of fun fish:



Technically, the above lionfish was not in the large tank, but it still qualifies as a "fun fish" in my book. Look at him--he's got all kinds of crazy tendrils! Actually, the lionfish was in a tank with an eel:


One of my favorite things was this octopus. I thought it would be bigger when I saw the sign for it, but it's still cool even if it's small.


There's the obligatory jellyfish tank (though nothing rivals the one at the Monterey Bay Aquarium):


Outside the aquarium building itself there is an open area that overlooks the sound and surrounding marshland. There's also a short nature walk. The wind was blowing in relatively fierce gusts that day, so even in the normally quiet bay we could see some small waves. Most of the marshland was devoid of any evidence of wildlife, but I'm guessing all of the cool birds and turtles were hunkered down to ride out the storm. Grant, Chad, Brent, and I decided at this point to venture out onto the nature trail. I should warn you up front that on this particular day I was wearing a skirt and some cute little sandals. I didn't really think when I started the walk that this would be something I shouldn't do in cute sandals. There should have been a sign or something.

Grant picked up a laminated handout at the start of the trail that detailed some of the things we presumably could see along the walk. (At least, that's what we thought it was for.) The first labelled stop was about poison ivy. We didn't think much of it at this point, although we laughed that they would choose to begin with a discussion of poison ivy and how to identify it. I just figured that there was probably some poison ivy nearby and they didn't want children playing in it. We continued on up the trail.

At the summit (and by summit, we're talking about a total change in elevation of maybe 15 feet?) the boys stopped to ponder the great expanse of land they had conquered:


After conquering the peak of the hike, we continued on around the back side. Later documented stops along the trail included discussions of snakes, swarming insects, and alligators. It was around the point of the alligator discussion that I really started to wonder exactly what kind of messed up hike of plagues we were on. I mean, this hike was for families and school groups. And they're not pointing out the local vegetation or the turtules or the egrets.....they're talking about man-eating alligators and swarms of swamp insects. Not to mention that I didn't consider how saturated the ground would be after all the rain and we were basically hiking through mud (in my cute sandals).

Finally, we were nearing the end of the hike. There was one bridge left to cross over some algae covered marshland and then we would have completed our Nature Walk of the Killer Attack Creatures. Grant went first over the bridge. About halfway across he yelped (in a very manly way, I assure you). Turns out the bridge was a "floating bridge" which didn't so much float as it sank beneath the algae covered swamp for the middle ~3 feet of the bridge. We had to either walk through (or leap over) the stank green "water" in the middle of the bridge or turn back around the way we came. All the boys had no difficulty powering across the bridge. But, you might recall, I had on cute sandals. Mud I can remove from my sandals, algae and smelly swamp water simply would not do.

So I did what any self-respecting woman would do. I took off my sandals, held them up in the air, and ran across the bridge leaping over the underwater section. I can think of no better way to end the nature walk of alligators, swarming insects, and snakes than to take off my shoes and leap over a swamp on the way out.