Up close and personal with sea turtles

Dave and I met sea turtles a few weeks ago!

How did we get up close and personal with sea turtles? We did Adventure Aquarium's Sea Turtle Encounter. Dave loves turtles. We have four of them. So I set up this encounter as a very early birthday present. He looks like he's enjoying himself, right?

cute little hatchling

They have a limit of three people for each sea turtle encounter, but this day it was just the two of us. The encounter started with a short talk about sea turtles by our biologist guide. The aquarium has greens and one loggerhead. At the time, it also had a little hatchling that was soon to be returned to the wild. We started there and watched the little guy swim around and eat some shrimp.

me on the dock

Then we put on life vests and headed to a small dock suspended over the main tank. This is where we would feed the turtles.

Here they come!

The tank was large, but once they knew we had food, they came over to investigate.

We used tongs to first feed them lettuce, then fish. We held out the lettuce for them, and we just popped the fish right in their mouths.

Bob

Bob, the female loggerhead, was especially cool about that. She held her mouth open and waited for us to drop in the piece of fish!

Like the first photo in this post shows, we could touch the sea turtles, too. That was great!

I can't say enough about how much fun this encounter was, and the biologist leading it was fantastic. Dave and I checked out the rest of the aquarium while we were there, and of course Dave had to ride the sea turtle in the kids' area.

It was a great day. Now I just have to meet some penguins...

Meet Jedi!

I've been a little preoccupied lately. With this guy...

Meet Jedi! He's a 1 1/2-year-old beagle who Dave and I adopted from SOS Beagle Rescue. (We changed his name.) I struggled with a lot of feelings about getting another dog after losing Kenobi. But I didn't replace Kenobi. I just gave another dog who needed love the place he left behind.

Jedi's owner didn't want him anymore, but he's a sweetheart! He's friendly and loveable and snuggly and awesome and we love him already.

And unlike it seems in this photo, he is incredibly hyper! He still has some puppy in him. Welcome to the family, Jedi. You don't ever have to worry about not having a home again.

Hiking Mt. Tammany at Delaware Water Gap

I recently visited Delaware Water Gap for the first time. It's not far- I really have no excuse why it took so long. My first stop was the headquarters to get some maps...and to get my national parks passport stamped.

Once again, there was an incredibly friendly, knowledgeable park ranger that was very helpful! I had planned on hiking up Mt. Tammany, so he showed me how to get there and also pointed out some other great hikes I might like to try.

The ranger had mentioned that the red dot trail up to the summit was the most challenging in the park. So I figured I'd take the chance to do that while Dave wasn't with me because he probably wouldn't like that. I went up the red and down the blue and walked a bit of the Appalachian Trail, too.

The ranger wasn't kidding about strenuous. It was rocky and steep and heart pumping. This bit was one of the easier parts! It was a great hike.

There were some nice views of the gap along the way. Coming down the blue trail was a breeze after the red trail, but I enjoyed the whole loop. I'm looking forward to going back and exploring other places to hike at Delaware Water Gap. It's a beautiful place.