During August 30-September 3, I took a long weekend holiday to visit my mom and friends in Tennessee. Between the six-hour drive to get there and a couple hour-long drives to Chattanooga from my mom’s home, I managed to put over 900 miles on my Jeep.
Since my mom is trying to sell her place, I spent part of the weekend helping her sort and clean. My mom has enough books to start her own library.
On Friday I met my friend Eve at the Tennessee Aquarium. I had been there before, but a number of new features had been added since then, and I was looking forward to checking them out. Besides that, it is such an awesome place, I’d visit again even if nothing was new.
The lighting throughout the facility is very subdued, so I did not get many good still pictures. However, I discovered I could get acceptable images by using my still camera’s video function. The movies below are not award-winning quality, and they are all very short (the longest is under 20 seconds). But they still offer a glimpse of some of the things I saw and enjoyed.
One of my favorite sea creatures, the sea dragon (a relative of the seahorse):
We also saw some cool jellyfish. This one was absolutely amazing. I could not get my camera to focus on it for some reason, but still you can see its amazing lights, which blink in multiple colors in a mesmerizing pattern (the video doesn’t show the colors very well):
There was a tank with several of these jellies inside, lit very dramatically. It looked like a living lava lamp.
This sea turtle was really cool:
There were tanks where you could touch sting rays. But those were not as cool as these fresh water rays with amazing patterns:
In another place there were adult and juvenile alligators:
The penguin exhibit was really fun. The penguins were absolutely amazing under water. They swim unbelievably fast, like underwater torpedoes. Here’s my friend Eve visiting with a curious, friendly penguin:
We also enjoyed a large walk-through butterfly exhibit. With the natural light, it was much easier to get photographs there:
This one had amazing blue wings, but he kept them folded whenever he was resting:
I had to laugh at this T-shirt, in the style of an iPod poster:
On Sunday I got to visit my friends Alan and Nicole Parker, who just recently moved to Southern Adventist University. It was fun to catch up with them. Nicole’s home reminds me why having three preschool age children is not for the faint of heart. But she does a great job of keeping the little monsters/cherubs in line.