The 3rd of July

So, hubby decided to take the 3rd off to give him a four day weekend. We don't like to be out in big crowds, so we thought the 3rd would be a great day to get out and see stuff. We haven't been to the ocean since we moved here. While I like the ocean, in theory, coming from Oregon, it's a neat place to go, but not something you actually use. I mean, I have seen people surfing in it, but we usually refer to them as crazy.
I visited my brother when he was stationed in Biloxi and the Gulf of Mexico there is like stagnant bath water. It was almost as warm as the outside air and it did not move.
I had never come across ocean like in Hawaii and after that, it was pretty hard to make good ocean comparisons to just about anywhere else I had frequented.
We drove down to Galveston around noon, hubby needed his morning nap first. We had no particular idea where to go, but we wanted to scope out Schlitterbahn Galveston and that led us next door to the Moody Gardens. I was kind of interested in the Aquarium, but Moe had just been to the Newport Oregon one with her outdoor ed kids, so I didn't want her to pay to do it all over again. We asked one of the people working there what she would do. She said, the Rainforest pyramid and the 4-D movie. So, off we went.

It started out really cool, until I started reading signs that said it was a free roaming animal area, which Fiona said made us feel like this....
Mostly because they had passed several cages with HUGE snakes in them. I say they had passed because there is no way I was checking out snakes. Apparently they were so large, they freaked out Hubby, who has been in a state of higher alert since we moved to Texas.
The free roaming animals were more of the macaw (parrot) and sloth variety, at which point I felt a bit more comforted. Until we came across a sign next to a raised water feature that said, Fish in this exhibit are carnivorous, so don't put your hands in the water!!! EWW! Although, I did get to see what a piranha looked like.

The girls enjoyed the birds and the fish and we finally did get to see a sloth, like a big hairy bath mat up in a tree. We also got to see some unusually colored squirrels from South America that came over to our side of the cage when Moe started making kissing noises at them. The air in the pyramid was such, that I was getting a feeling for the humidity that has been threatened to be on it's way. Ah, to live in a tropical rainforest. When we were done, we made our way to the 4-D movie which was entitled Planet Earth. We were splashed quite a bit, as the movie was about the oceans. But the really weird part came when we were observing all of these water snakes (have you figured out yet how much I HATE snakes?) when part of the seat back popped out for a scare. I managed to miss most of it, thank heavens, because I was leaned over towards hubby because I was so cold from the air blowing and water throwing. Fiona, on the other hand, really got it and did NOT appreciate it. She was really good natured about the whole thing and even posed for a picture.

Then we went to find the ocean. What we found was a lot better than what I had expected (mainly a continuation of the beach in Mississippi). We had brought towels, but only Hubby brought his swimsuit. C'mon, it's been a few years since I have been in an ocean that is actually habitable.

We made our way back in to Houston and had dinner at a great Mexican restaurant and leisurely made our way home, missing all of the traffic because they were now headed out of town and we were headed back in!