3/20/15 Moody Gardens Is Old-ish But Still Kinda Cool?

    We went to both of the Moody Garden pyramids this past week.  One of the pyramids is dedicated to marine life, while the other focuses on the different rain forests.  Both have a main job of conserving endangered species of animals and plants.   The Moody Gardens area has itself grown a lot, Schlitterbahn is right outside the doors of the pyramids, along with various theater venues in IMAX, 3D, and 4D variations, a spa and hotel, golf course, and of course a zip line course for the cooler kids.

    The marine pyramid was divided into four sections.  One had an aquarium with sea lions, one was a huge aquarium with a tunnel going right through and had probably a hundred species, with 4-5 different shark varieties.  Then there was a good sized exhibit with the various sizes of penguins, from emperor on down.  The final exhibit was kind of a mangrove outcropping, but maybe it was under construction as not much appeared to be happening.  It had mangrove trees like in the Florida everglades, where the roots are supposed to be home to many species of animals.

    The tunnel of glass with aquarium all around was great, probably spent half an hour just following the different sharks and manta rays both easily in the 7ft range swimming around like they owned the place.  Along the way, there were also many smaller aquariums/exhibits showing smaller sealife, such as octopi, jellyfish, baby sharks that were born in house.  Maybe the one negative was the smell, it was very fishy, and I wasn't sure whether to blame the penguins or the sea lions but man!!!

    The other pyramid was very different, you enter a long hall way going around the pyramid and along the way there are small habitats for snakes and critters, but also a lot of interesting information on the walls.  After going a ways, there is a staircase that takes you up, and when you get upstairs, there is a set of doors that takes you out into the clear glass pyramid.  You start out on the second level and the first thing that hits you is the heat, all week it has been in the 70s, it was 95 degrees and 50% humidity in there, for the sake of the plants and animals.  I broke into a sweat quick.  There are small vents that push cooler air and I found myself looking for that cool air as I moved through.  After awhile you go around, then back into a building of sorts, walk down and comeback out in the lower level.  They really do pack a lot of interesting stuff into these two pyramids.  My favorite part was seeing the vampire bats and as we were there, one of the employees went in to change their food, blood, and all the bats went into a se ction and stayed together.  Once she was done, they spread apart and were happy to be doing their own thing.  This habitat was much bigger than the one at the San Antonio Zoo, other place I have seen vampire bats.  Plus they had a blue light instead of the creepy red light.

    I was suggesting to my wife that she should bring kids to see this, she agreed it was fun and informative, two criteria for summer field trips which she is in charge of from time to time.   We ended the day there by sitting outside watching the sun go down and some serius fog coming in as we drank some soda.  Chubs of course waited patiently so he could start whining again about going to Target to get another action figure from Assassin's Creed, his newest video game interest.  Yeah, as much as the last sentence doesn't fit the tone of the blog, is exactly how he sounded as we were trying to enjoy our evening.