The Fascination of Fish and Dinosaurs

An adventure with the grandsons

They love dinosaurs. They have dinosaur puzzles, books, and herds of plastic figures. They order Jurassic Chicken at the Rainforest Café. Two helpings. What is it about these prehistoric animals no man has ever seen? Perhaps it’s the fact that this isn’t fairy tale or sci-fi stuff. They were real. And they were huge.

And they’re not too young to remember the wonderful Don Bluth animated movie “Land Before Time.”  And no doubt they’re aware of  serious adult dino flicks like “Jurassic Park.” Especially since it just keeps going.

So for an end-of-summer fling I took them to Moody Gardens on Galveston Island to see the animatronic Dino Alive display. It was quite something, but not as much as I expected.  We walked through the exhibit twice and only burned about 20 minutes.

That’s why we ended up at the Aquarium Pyramid.

It was hardly their first trip to an aquarium, but this was by far the biggest one they’d ever seen. I was amazed at the way they stood transfixed, leaving nose and hand prints on every inch of glass they could reach. No TV show ever captivated them like this.

And they missed nothing. “Grandma, look at this one!” “Grandma, look at that little one over there!” “Grandma let me take a picture of the white one on the bottom!” “Hey! Here comes a shark!”

In short, discovery with kids is pure joy. You see through new eyes. You see things you’d never notice otherwise. And you experience an excitement long gone from jaded adult life.

I wanna do it again!

I Take a Grandson to the

This is the one on the Kemah Boardwalk. The downtown Houston location is much more spectacular but Grandma doesn’t take on the high-speed maze of crisscrossing Interstates unless absolutely necessary. I owed him. Before his big brother Mikey started Big School (kindergarten) I was always snatching him up and heading for the Rainforest Café in Galveston. Such a cool place.  Now it’s Gabriel’s turn.

But the Rainforest is filled with trumpeting elephants, roaring apes, and indoor thunderstorms. Since I wanted to at least try to get in a chat with my daughter-in-law, I elected to check out the Aquarium.
Bear in mind that even in the dullest of settings, kids never eat at restaurants. They’re too busy looking around and demanding trips to the bathroom. Given the overstimulation of wall-to-wall live, swimming fish, you can totally save your money. Oh, they might grab a fry or something off your plate in between the piranha tank and the one with Nemo and Dory, but they certainly won’t do any serious eating.
We adults were most mesmerized by the main tank. Interspersed with three sharks, a tiger and two smaller reef sharks, were several enormous groupers. The waiter said they could get up to 800 lbs. Most surprising to me were the two long, green moray eels. I had no idea they were so big.
The food was top quality and elegantly presented, but way overpriced. Here the usual dinner salad was extra. Like, $5.99 extra. So not an everyday lunch spot.

After the meal we went down to the stingray pool. Yes, we petted the stingrays. Very smooth, rubbery and slippery. They’re friendly to humans but not so much with each other. One slapping set-to sent me scrambling aside to wipe off my camera and eyeglasses.

We capped off our adventure with a train ride around all the Boardwalk attractions. It was a good time. But now I feel I owe Mikey again…