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cattitude and our friend P. on the expotition to the Coney Island Aquarium and the beach, mostly because of weather: yes, cooler near the shore, but we'd had the sort of heat wave where I barely functioned outside the air conditioning.
Tuesday morning was cool and bright and gorgeous, so I decided to go.
On the way out, we saw an eagle flying overhead. It's one thing to see it on a branch, another to have it in the sky overhead. After a couple of minutes, the crows showed up to do what crows always do with raptors--and they were small! (Yes, they mob red-tail hawks, but the size difference isn't anything like as huge.) We watched the eagle until it disappeared behind the ridge, then went on with the day's plans.
The Aquarium was fine, but my strongest memory isn't of anything planned, but of all the dragonflies, over the stands for the dolphin show, and just floating about. The touching pool was also good: this time they had horseshoe crabs, and starfish. Horseshoe crabs have these little pincers, just like regular crabs, but not very strong. Basically, they look far more like other crabs underneath than you'd expect from how different the shells are.
We had a nibble at the aquarium, to keep functional, then got Nathan's hotdogs on the boardwalk. Now, you can't swim right after eating, so we had time to wander. And P. wanted to play whack-a-mole. She asked someone running another concession, and he pointed us into Astroland. We found the place. She played Whack-a-mole. Cattitude played Whack-a-mole. I didn't: it's exactly the sort of fast-reflex game I dislike. I played Skee-ball, and so did they. I did moderately well, though Cattitude did better. We pooled our prize tickets, because he saw something he liked, and I used the rest of mine to get three stickers, with eagles on them. I carefully picked out eagles that were pictures of eagles, not flag-and-symbol things, because we have actual live eagles here.
Then we went down to the beach. We found no lockers (and suspect there are none), so we took turns sitting on the beach and watching our stuff. I'm not a good swimmer, but I had fun playing with the waves, talking with my friends and random strangers, and fishing out the odd mussel shell. There were dragonflies over the water, and gulls flying low nearby: amazing how bold they get when there aren't a lot of people around.
Must do this again (the beach part, and maybe the skee-ball: I don't think I need to go back to the aquarium very often, it's not a patch on the Bronx Zoo).
cattitude and our friend P. on the expotition to the Coney Island Aquarium and the beach, mostly because of weather: yes, cooler near the shore, but we'd had the sort of heat wave where I barely functioned outside the air conditioning.Tuesday morning was cool and bright and gorgeous, so I decided to go.
On the way out, we saw an eagle flying overhead. It's one thing to see it on a branch, another to have it in the sky overhead. After a couple of minutes, the crows showed up to do what crows always do with raptors--and they were small! (Yes, they mob red-tail hawks, but the size difference isn't anything like as huge.) We watched the eagle until it disappeared behind the ridge, then went on with the day's plans.
The Aquarium was fine, but my strongest memory isn't of anything planned, but of all the dragonflies, over the stands for the dolphin show, and just floating about. The touching pool was also good: this time they had horseshoe crabs, and starfish. Horseshoe crabs have these little pincers, just like regular crabs, but not very strong. Basically, they look far more like other crabs underneath than you'd expect from how different the shells are.
We had a nibble at the aquarium, to keep functional, then got Nathan's hotdogs on the boardwalk. Now, you can't swim right after eating, so we had time to wander. And P. wanted to play whack-a-mole. She asked someone running another concession, and he pointed us into Astroland. We found the place. She played Whack-a-mole. Cattitude played Whack-a-mole. I didn't: it's exactly the sort of fast-reflex game I dislike. I played Skee-ball, and so did they. I did moderately well, though Cattitude did better. We pooled our prize tickets, because he saw something he liked, and I used the rest of mine to get three stickers, with eagles on them. I carefully picked out eagles that were pictures of eagles, not flag-and-symbol things, because we have actual live eagles here.
Then we went down to the beach. We found no lockers (and suspect there are none), so we took turns sitting on the beach and watching our stuff. I'm not a good swimmer, but I had fun playing with the waves, talking with my friends and random strangers, and fishing out the odd mussel shell. There were dragonflies over the water, and gulls flying low nearby: amazing how bold they get when there aren't a lot of people around.
Must do this again (the beach part, and maybe the skee-ball: I don't think I need to go back to the aquarium very often, it's not a patch on the Bronx Zoo).