Day 146: Cherry Hill to Baltimore, MA

After a farewell breakfast, we said goodbye to Grandma Cora and hit the road to continue on our adventure. We dropped our trailer off at Patapsco Valley State Park - Hilton Area about a half hour outside of Baltimore. It was early and the park was still quiet. It is a lovely forested state park and our campsite is large and private.

Liam helping Alistair to read the menu.

Still waking up.

Today’s activity took us into downtown Baltimore, where we visited the National Aquarium. We were hoping for a quiet, not crowded visit with our midday on a weekday timing and that is exactly what we got. We saw all the animals perfectly, including at the animal meet and greet and we were the only ones in the theatre for the afternoon 4D movie.

It was homeschooling day at the aquarium so there were educational tables set up with staff manning them to share information with visitors. We loved the touch tank exhibits where we learned all about horseshoe crabs and got to (safely) touch jellyfish! Did you know that a horseshoe crab’s brain is half the size of a cheerio? They use their long, spiny tail to flip themselves back over when the tides flip them upside down. We learned that males can be identified by their punching arms which females don’t have. Another interesting fact is that they don’t have good eyes so they form chains (think crab conga line) with a female on the front and males following her. All the crabs have food sensors in their feet to help them find things to eat in the sand which they then lift into their mouths located on their underside. The last cool tidbit we learned about horseshoe crabs was that they have neon blue blood. In fact, they are farmed for their blood which is used in medicine to test sterilization because it has an antibiotic like property where it binds to any foreign object in the bloodstream. 

This was a touch tank so we petted the horseshoe crabs on their shells.

He’s working on flipping himself back over. Go tail!

We visited lots of other animals but especially cool was touching the jellyfish. We have never experienced a jellyfish touch tank before. There were dozens floating around and the type we touched could sting shrimp but their sting wasn’t powerful enough to be felt by human skin. It was amazing. Did you know that jellyfish have four stomachs? They are the whiter circles you see in the middle of their body. When they eat, the food shows up inside their circular stomach and if the food is colourful, this part of the jellyfish will change to be the colour of the food (since you are seeing the actual food inside the stomachs). Fascinating.

They felt as expected - soft and slimy but firm like jello.

This jellyfish has a mutation to have six stomachs instead of the usual four. He’s special.

The aquarium also had a large octopus. It watched us very closely as we watched it through the glass. What a strange and wonderful creature.

Posing with the octopus.

This Amazonian catfish was nearly as large as Alistair!

The rainforest floor was super cool.

We spotted a sloth. Apparently the sloths are troublemakers, getting into all kinds of mischief after hours. Hard to imagine since they are so slow. Maybe they are fooling us all and actually go turbo speed once the aquarium closes for the night.

We saw a whole section of poisonous frogs, though Ian tells me that they are actually not poisonous when bred in captivity because they do not eat the specific bugs needed for them to produce toxins. Not sure I would risk it, though they are cute little fellas when we are separated by glass.

This dude was singing to us.

We finally saw what I always look for at aquariums - the green, spongy moray eel. We found him! He was as wonderful as usual. He made funny faces at us.

Shark alley was a bit of a let down as it was half under construction and not nearly as impressive as the more modern shark tubes that you ride through on a conveyor belt.

The jellyfish exhibit is always a crowd pleaser.

These are the jellyfish local to the Baltimore harbour. They are the very stingy type.

The pig nosed turtle was a friendly guy.

We watched the aquarium volunteer feed the archer fish. He is called this because this fish can shoot a stream of water out of his mouth like a water gun to knock a live insect into the water. What an amazing party trick. Bullseye!

This afternoon’s live animal encounter was with Oscar the skink.

Oscar had a prehensile tail (like a chameleon) but he didn’t like to use it much. He was asked to retire from the zoo’s breeding program because he was too good at it and too many of the offspring ended up being related to him and each other. Oops! Did you know that skinks don’t lay eggs but actually birth young that are one third the mother’s body size at delivery (and sometimes they have twins or triplets) - ouch!

Our 4D movie experience on sharks was certainly exciting. We got poked in the back (I jumped a foot!), sprayed multiple times with water, and blown in the face with wind.

Sporting our stylish 3D shades for the movie.

Following the aquarium we headed home through downtown Baltimore. We saw lots and lots of row houses before getting back to the state park. After dinner and a campfire, we are turning in for an early bedtime.