American Revolution Road Trip: New England Aquarium

I think this is the last non-American Revolution activity that we do on our road trip, but with two kids who love sharks, and one kid who wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up, when you pass an aquarium on a vacation, you go in:

How adorable is this? The younger kid was thrilled, and I'm pretty excited that I happened to have my camera up and ready to catch it!

 The New England Aquarium has a lovely, large chondrichthyan touch tank, and the kids and I spent almost an hour there, our hands in the water, petting sharks and rays:

Please observe how much of this child's sleeve is IN THE WATER. A worthy sacrifice for petting this ray, of course.

 The children were there so long and so patiently that they eventually attracted the notice of the zookeepers at the exhibit, and were used as models of how to properly touch the animals. I struck up a conversation with one of the zookeepers, after he'd shown my children a little shark hiding sneakily but still in touching distance, and mentioned to him that we'd been studying sharks for the past three months, and had, in fact, just finished dissecting one. He was fascinated, and immediately began quizzing the younger kid about what all she'd seen during her dissection. He heard about the shark's organs, and all the disgusting things that we'd found inside its stomach, and then quizzed me about where on earth I'd found a shark to dissect on top of our kitchen table.

Fortunately, he thought that dissecting a shark on top of one's kitchen table was great, not weird.

Okay, he thought it was weird, too, but still great!

And yes, I had my arms in the water just like the kids. I studied chondrichthyans for three months, too!

We finally managed to tear ourselves away from the touch tank, and wouldn't you know it, there was an entire aquarium full of stuff to see!

This is the one who wants to be a marine biologist, if that look on her face didn't tell you as much.

Lookit! A shark egg! We've also seen this at Shedd Aquarium, and it's never not cool:

I'm not much of a gift shop shopper, and I didn't buy anything in this shop, either, but I SUPER wanted two full sets of these tentacles, nevertheless:

Next time: Freedom Trail and all things Boston!