Norway Day 11: Atlanterhavsparken Aquarium

 After a delicious breakfast at the hotel, we headed to the Atlanterhavsparken Aquarium. Actually, U first left to charge the car and the rest of us walked to join him.

First up at the aquarium were the otters on Otter Island. There were four of them and they were quite active when we arrived. Here are some pictures of their cuteness.

Otter Island is completely natural, as it was before the aquarium was built, with the exception of the lighthouse.

This one was curious about Matthew's shoe.

The keeper came to feed them and told us about each of the otters who are all between 1.5-2 years old. They have two girls and two boys. One of the girls is named Sarah. She was found in the area and is adventurous and whimsical. She is also picky--she did not like some of the fish she was given so would drop it and go get more fish. Otters have thick hair: 70,000-100,000 hair strands per square cm!

Enjoying some fish.

Next up were the penguins. It was fun to watch them swim around in the water.

Feeding time! A few penguins did not come over which we thought was odd. However, we later learned that it was because they were staying by the nesting boxes that had babies in them. Most of the animals in the aquarium are native to the area. The penguins, however, are from Chile.

Cool outside crab fountain

Watching the rays swim around their tank

Me with a curly octupus

Matthew and Megan at an interactive station

 A diver got in the huge Atlantic Tank to feed the fish.

It was cool to see the fish swarming around him, especially some of the big fish like halibut that tend to hang out on the bottom of the tank.

Hungry fish!

Me touching a sea star.

Megan and Matthew feeding the crabs.

Closer up shot of one crab.

We enjoyed watching the 10 seals get fed. One of them jumped quite high.

Megan's take on the seals: The way they moved on land was interesting. And they can move really fast in water.

Me testing out her reflexes. She did not do as well as the others.

Me, Megan and Matthew enjoying carrot cake.

U with our Norway car. It was a nice car even if it did have its idiosyncrasies (like braking on its own). 

Croissant sandwiches and croissants for dinner.

Yummy ice cream!
Me had seabuckthorn/strawberry which was an interesting combo.

U Step Count: 10.5k

Flagstaff

 We headed up to Flagstaff for the weekend. It was nice and we enjoyed a bit of cooler weather (although Phoenix had a heat wave so it was still in the 90s in Flagstaff).

After checking into our hotel, we got some DQ ice cream and walked around the NAU campus.

Saturday morning, we headed to Bearizona after eating breakfast at the hotel.

Entering Bearizona. We went around the driving loop two times in a row.

Me with a reindeer.

Reindeer

A couple pictures of the deer. Some were quite lively, chasing around other deer.

Sleeping Alaskan Tundra wolves

Junior black bears. There were a lot of them!

There were both American and White Bison. They had different areas labelled on the map but in reality they were mixed together.

Dust bath!

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep

Adult Black Bears. There were so many! And a lot of them were eating.

Rocky Mountain Goat and baby

After our trips around the driving loop, we headed into the walking area.

Megan, Matthew, Me, U

There were three raccoons. Megan named them Rocket, Supernova and Starship. They were scampering all around their enclosure.

We watched the grizzly bears for a bit.

Red fox

Badgers, who look like walking rugs.

The bobcats paced around their enclosure, eventually posing on "Pride rock."

Watching the grizzly bear enrichment activities.

U and Me

Sleeping otters on our first pass by them.

Megan, Matthew and Me

When we walked back by the otters, there was movement! They were really moving around a lot, swimming and climbing on the rocks.

Venturing into the water.

We really wanted to see one go down the waterslide. We thought this one would but it just ended up getting a drink and walking down.

4 little otters

Sunning on the rocks.

Matthew, Megan and Me with an elk

U with a cougar.

We drove around the loop one more time. The wolves were up and active this time! We especially enjoyed watching the Arctic wolves run around their enclosure.

A bear enjoying a mid day bath.

The bison had moved out into the fields.

Lots of bison!

Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep including some babies.

Yup, he's got big horns....

More bears!

We then hiked the lava tube. It was quite cool--Me's hands and fingers were pretty frozen when we finished (Megan's were warm somehow???). There was a lot of rock scrambling to get down and it was uneven a lot of the way. Me discovered that she saw better when she removed her sunglasses! Overall, we enjoyed the hike although some of us bumped our heads multiple times.

Me and Megan hiking into the cave.

Matthew, Me and Megan

Matthew, Me, Megan and U at the end of the cave.

U, Megan and Me upon resurfacing. It took Me a bit to warm up.

We ate a yummy dinner at Wildflower.

Me and Matthew with ice cream. The homemade waffle cones were delicious.

We went to Lowell Observatory for a bit. We saw the Imagination show and did the Pluto walk. We looked in the telescopes at a star that is 37 light years away, at Mars and at the M13 cluster. The last one was amazing! We saw the M5 nebula on the Clark telescope, which was also amazing with over 500,000 stars!

Megan, U and Matthew

Matthew found rover.

They had glowy rocks on the ground to mark the path in the dark. They were super neat and we may have collected a few that were off the path.

The next day, which was Father's Day, we went to the Arboretum after breakfast. We learned all about beekeeping and swarms vs colonies. We looked at the special pollinator exhibits.

Me, Matthew, Megan and U

Me, Matthew and Megan with the San Francisco Peaks in the background.

U with some of the neat artwork at the botanic garden.

We went back to Lowell Observatory. The kids played in the hands on area for quite awhile. We watched the film on celestial skies, which included info on the observatory in Jaipur that we went to. We were also able to see some big solar flares on the sun. We did the Pluto, galaxy and universe walks.

Megan and Matthew

Me with the Clark telescope. This is where we saw the amazing M5 nebula on Saturday evening.

Megan, Matthew, Me and U with the telescope that discovered Pluto.

Megan and Matthew on some of the apparatus by the universe walk.

They have completely done the observatory and it is really nice. This neat structure is on the ceiling in the atrium.

Matthew outside Lowell.

There was a fire beside the road on our way home. We actually drove right by it but this photo provides a better perspective.

We enjoyed a nice weekend together in Flagstaff!