Birch Aquarium – Hoots of a Night Al

Does anyone remember when we were in La Jolla? Well, already 10 weeks have passed since we were there! Crazy, I know! I still wanted to recap some of our time there, so I can remember it in the future! (I have a terrible memory….this may be the only chance I’ll have of any hint of memories of the trip.) When we last left off, my sweet mom (fondly known on the blog as Sassy Kat), was in town visiting us to enjoy La Jolla and take a trip to Disneyland. We also spent a day shopping around La Jolla, but one of the best days was when we went to the aquarium! Louis and I visited there a few weeks before my mom came, and I wanted to head back because I knew she would love it!

Sassy Kat loved looking at the relaxing, beautiful exhibits full of the sea creatures!

We even had a sweet little sting ray smile at us. 🙂

I couldn’t get over how vibrantly colored the exhibits, fish, and underwater plants were! It made me wish I could scuba dive to see them on a grander scale in the ocean as nature intended.

Let’s take a moment to admire how beautiful my mom is. She was totally rocking the Cali style!

Aside from her looks, she’s got a great personality. 😉 Sassy Kat is definitely a kid at heart! We were laughing our way through the aquarium, and I’m sure everyone there thought we were crazy!

We wandered outside to the balcony where you could touch starfish and sea cucumbers in the tide pool exhibits. We mostly enjoyed the beautiful weather, the breath-taking views, and being together.

Seriously, when I told you before that everyone probably thought we were crazy? I wasn’t kidding. We both share the philosophy that life is too short to worry about being embarrassed at the cost of having fun.

We enjoyed one last sweeping view from the aquarium and decided it was time to head down to the water to enjoy some lunch.

When I looked up our restaurant, it was only a mile or so from the aquarium. In Texas, that probably would have meant a straight, flat shot. However, I forgot we were in California. A 30-minute walk up, down, and all around ~~mountains~~ hills, we finally reached our destination! Guess we were burning calories for the food we were about to enjoy?

We couldn’t complain though, because the view on our walk was absolutely stunning, as usual.

Not to mention, I was with my amazing mom, and that’s ALWAYS a fun time!

We finally arrived at Caroline’s Seaside Cafe. If you’re ever in La Jolla, I definitely recommend checking it out! Our sandwiches were delicious, and they had a great assortment of soups, salads, and fresh, yummy dishes. The view was spectacular as well!

If anyone’s curious, my nail polish is “Easy Going” by Sinful Colors. It was a gift from Sassy Kat. 🙂

After our yummy lunch, we wandered down closer to the water. I understand why Californians want to be outside all the time! The sound of the ocean, the cool breeze, the sun shining down…it was all so relaxing. We spent some time sitting on a bench and just enjoying the environment and each other’s company.

Did I mention this is part of a college campus? There were students sitting all over the place studying textbooks and writing papers on their laptops. Um, can you imagine walking out of your dorm and being feet from the ocean? I loved going to Texas A&M, but I can’t deny La Jolla is definitely a little bit more beautiful than good ole’ College Station.

We were pooped after our long walk all around La Jolla, so we headed back to the hotel to rest up until dinner. Once Louis got off work, we all went to Torrey Pines golf course to pick up some souvenirs for my dad. He’s an amazing golfer (like got a full scholarship to play in college and grew up on a golf course amazing), so we knew he’d love some items from the famous course. I only wish he could have visited with my mom, so he could have played! I’m sure he would have dominated all the holes! While we were there, some super important putting championship was going on (how obvious is it I know nothing about golf?), and we were just talking and laughing away right by the players before we realized how quiet everyone else was. Oops. Very typical. Just living life and half the time totally unaware of what else is going on around us! Hopefully my mom and I didn’t embarrass Louis too much. As you can see below, the course was absolutely beautiful!

From Torrey Pines, we headed to downtown La Jolla for some more souvenir shopping. We happened to catch it right at sunset, and, as usual, it was breathtaking. We spent about 30 minutes just admiring the beautiful sunset, snapping pictures, and marveling at how stunning it was. I tried to capture some of the sunset below…my pictures really can’t do it justice though. I couldn’t have imagined a better trip for my mom to make out to La Jolla to visit us. The entire time we just laughed and had a blast being together. It was great to have her bring a piece of home out to California during our long trip. I’m so thankful we’ll always have these memories!

Quite a few weeks ago, Louis and I visited the Birch Aquarium here in La Jolla. We went on an overcast Sunday afternoon and enjoyed a few hours of walking around the building admiring both the amazing sea life and the beautiful views around the aquarium. Being so close to the ocean and being part of the Scripps Research Center and UCSD allows for the aquarium to have several interesting exhibits. And, of course, being built on a cliff less than a mile from the ocean allows for both great views and a large assortment of fish and species to research.

One of the first exhibits to greet us inside was their assortment of jellyfish. I could have stood there for hours and watched them. They were SO relaxing and serene looking. The coral jellyfish were my 2nd favorite type, and my favorite type were the moon jellies shown in the video I captured.

Another neat area was their Kelp Exhibit, which was one of the largest indoor aquarium tanks I’ve ever seen. They do several daily feeding shows you can watch, and they also have a live stream on their website called the Kelp Cam. I tried to include some children in the picture below so you could get a grasp of how large this exhibit was.

After we admired the kelp for a while, we journeyed over to a different exhibit. There, we saw a cute little fish that was scooping up rocks with his mouth and then spitting them out to form either a pile, a hole, or both??? I snagged a quick video while we observed him. There were no volunteers around for me to ask what he was up to, but we enjoyed watching him for a bit! I feel like I should have added the Rocky theme song to the video or something…too much?

We finally headed outside on the back deck of the aquarium to take in the beautiful views and enjoy the tide pool exhibit. In the tide pool there were different types of starfish and fish you could touch. Some were super slimy, and some were rough and spiky! We “pet” the different species and then stood around awkwardly looking for someone to take our picture 🙂

Once we were done on the balcony we headed inside to the seahorse exhibit. The coolest seahorse in my opinion was the Weedy Seadragon. It looked so wispy and fragile and was barely drifting through the water.

There was also a bizarre video in this area explaining that the male seahorses develop the babies in their stomach and give birth to them. The video showed a male seahorse giving birth, and the only way I can describe it is that it looked like he was sneezing out the babies about 15-20 at a time. Seriously bizarre. It’s so crazy how diverse sea creatures are and how HUGE the ocean is. There is SO much of it that is totally undiscovered and unexplored. It’s like an entirely different world!

Our quick, educational visit was a fun way to spend our afternoon! I still have SO many things that have happened that I need to blog about! I’ll try to catch up in the next couple of weeks. Until then!

Sassy Kat Visits La Jolla: Part 2

Night Al Goes to the Aquarium