Mote Aquarium & Day 2

On our second full day in Florida, we headed to the Mote Aquarium in Sarasota to see all the animals that live in the ocean.  It was a neat place.  As soon as we walked in to the first aquarium that was full of fish, I said, "Hello, fish!".  I did it again at the 2nd aquarium, but instead, I said, "Hi fish!"  This place has the largest giant squid in any aquarium.  Unfortunately, it's dead, but it's 27 feet long!  It used to weigh a lot more, but it is losing weight for some reason.  We got to watch the trainers work with sharks & dolphins.  We also got to touch rays, anemones, and hermit crabs.  Then we got to see manatees and some of the sea turtles that were rescued during the recent frigid Florida weather.  It was a really neat place, but my favorite was walking through a net like the sea turtles do.  I used the escape hatch like turtles so that I didn't get stuck in a fisherman's boat.  After the aquarium, we visited a bird sanctuary next door.  We kind of whizzed through it since we were all ready for lunch.  The best part was seeing some wild egrets that showed up for lunch.  We also saw a white pelican that had been injured and was there to get better.  He was quite an impressive bird (of course we forgot to take a picture because we were so mesmerized)!

After seeing all the animals we were famished so we headed to a restaurant Papa remembered being really good.  He was right- it was quite tasty!  It was so warm out we decided to sit outside.  It actually turned out to be hot because we were sitting right in the sun, but after a really long, cold winter, we didn't mind at all!

After lunch, we went to Siesta Keys beach which is this gorgeous all white beach which is made of quartz!  It is always cool to the touch.  When we got to this huge beach I wasn't sure that I wanted to put my feet in the sand.  At first, I would just try to do everything from the beach towel, but I made sure to bring my bucket along with me so I could shovel sand and I couldn't do that very well without getting my feet a bit sandy!