{"id":223,"date":"2011-08-06T11:03:57","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T18:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/?p=223"},"modified":"2011-08-06T11:03:57","modified_gmt":"2011-08-06T18:03:57","slug":"summer-staycation-part-2-space-needle-aquarium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"Summer Staycation Part 2: Space Needle & Aquarium"},"content":{"rendered":"

What would a staycation in Seattle be without a visit to the Space Needle<\/a>?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s gotta be done.\u00c2\u00a0 And since this was Son’s first trip to Seattle, it really really had to be done.<\/p>\n

So here is the obligatory cheesy family photo pasted on their stock background.\u00c2\u00a0 It was free, so why not?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Yep that’s us.\u00c2\u00a0 Aren’t we cute all bundled up in our jackets in the middle of everyone else’s unbearably oppressive heat wave?\u00c2\u00a0 We’re wearing shorts.\u00c2\u00a0 Promise.\u00c2\u00a0 And here is my little man at the top with the overcast day behind him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I ordered a sunny day.\u00c2\u00a0 The weatherman promised a sunny day.\u00c2\u00a0 It did not happen.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the fact that it is summer and summer here is supposed to be sunny.\u00c2\u00a0 We had a week of clouds.\u00c2\u00a0 No rain, just clouds.\u00c2\u00a0 I was a bit miffed.\u00c2\u00a0 We should have been able to see the mountains ringing the area.\u00c2\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n

Next up: the Seattle Aquarium<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I highly recommend a visit to this family adventure destination for anyone with kids.\u00c2\u00a0 This trumped the zoo, Mount St. Helens, and the Space Needle in the first 15 minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 To score extra large parental bonus points, try to learn when they might be feeding some of the animals and time your visit to coincide.\u00c2\u00a0 That alone triples the kiddie joy factor.\u00c2\u00a0 And it was fun for the adults too.\u00c2\u00a0 We were there in the late afternoon, so we found out they would be feeding the octopus and the sea otters while we were there.\u00c2\u00a0 Happy accident!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>They have two large touch tanks where visitors can see what sea stars, sea urchins, and anemones feel like.\u00c2\u00a0 The staff there are extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and patient…and there are lots of them.\u00c2\u00a0 One volunteer answered a whole list of questions from Son about how and what the sea urchins and anemones eat, and then provided us with a live demonstration.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes folks, my son got to gently place a small portion of food where the animals could get it and watch as the spikes and sticky arms moved it around to their mouths.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the coolest thing ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then they fed the octopus and Son got a nearly front row seat for that.\u00c2\u00a0 They fed it a couple of squid as we craned our necks to watch over the crowd.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, Son says the best part was when the octopus released a cloud of…um, waste product.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s 10, what do you expect?<\/p>\n

I have to say their exhibits are well done.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not all set up like fish tanks where you just look at the animals.\u00c2\u00a0 A bunch of the exhibits are interactive.\u00c2\u00a0 In the case of the octopus, she has two 360 glass tanks that are connected by a tube, so everyone can see and she’s not hiding behind a rock.\u00c2\u00a0 They had jellyfish swimming around in a glass ring that you can walk through.\u00c2\u00a0 And the sea otter tank was three sided as well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We also had a front row spot for the sea otter feeding.\u00c2\u00a0 They were so darn cute that everyone had a big grin plastered on their face.\u00c2\u00a0 I snapped about three dozen action shots, but I’ll spare you from that boringly long slide show and just post the highlights.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>They would float on their backs while snarfing up the fish.\u00c2\u00a0 And if they happened to get more than one fish at a time, they would stuff the extra in their armpit for safekeeping…generally only for about 30 seconds, because they eat amazingly fast.\u00c2\u00a0 We also witnessed some acts of sharing, where one would pause halfway through a piece of fish and hand feed the rest to another.\u00c2\u00a0 So glad we didn’t miss that experience.<\/p>\n

The aquarium also had a large section on different types of salmon and their habitats.\u00c2\u00a0 The facility has a salmon hatching program and a fish ladder so they can return to spawn when the time comes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Salmon young on their way to growing big enough to be released into the sea.<\/p><\/div>\n

After all that walking and fun we parked ourselves at one of the many seafood restaurants lining the street along Puget Sound in downtown Seattle and we ate huge heaping platefuls of goodness.\u00c2\u00a0 The day was definitely a win for the staycation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What would a staycation in Seattle be without a visit to the Space Needle?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s gotta be done.\u00c2\u00a0 And since this was Son’s first trip to Seattle, it really really had to be done. So here is the obligatory cheesy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[62,30,61,58,60],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventuring","tag-aquarium","tag-seattle","tag-space-needle","tag-summer","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.tangledstrands.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}