A Blustery Day

We're all on vacation this week, so today we decided to visit the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. We've been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium several times but hadn't seen the one right here in our backyard. This shot was taken in the outside area where they have the touch pools, a kid's play area, and Lorakeet exhibits.


Thanks to some 2-for-1 tickets it only cost us $10 apiece to get in and I'm glad I didn't have to pay full price. This facility is quite a bit smaller than the one in Monterey, and unless you're a little kid who has to touch everything, you can pretty much see the whole thing in about 90 minutes. She's not a little kid anymore, but she still loves to touch the critter, like this large ray (stingers not included).

My daughter received a new digital camera from Santa this year, and she took 124 pictures just today. She took this one of one of the many exhibits.

When we came out of the aquarium the winds had dramatically increased. We had a rainstorm last night and the forecast was for gale force winds this afternoon and evening. They were already raking the Long Beach area and everywhere you looked there was dead palm tree debris that had rained down from above.

We took Pacific Coast Highway south from Long Beach to check out the high surf and stopped in Huntington Beach to walk out on the pier. The winds were absolutely howling off the ocean - probably 40+ mph with gusts over 50. Sand was blowing (which is great when you wear contacts), and as you can see from the photo below, the kids actually had to lean into the wind to keep from being blown over. I was wearing a windbreaker that acted quite nicely as a sail. It made for an interesting walk to the end of the pier and back.

The seas were very rough with high swells coming in. The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Tonight we're heading back to the beach to eat at the Spaghetti Factory near the Newport Beach pier. If the wind calms down a bit we may try walking out on that pier too.