Chattanooga Aquarium

Julia spent an hour with the butterflies.

We drove to Chattanooga today to visit the aquarium.  The city is on the Tennessee River, and the aquarium is huge.  It's about 3-4 times as large as the Long Beach aquarium and it includes fresh and salt water exhibits, a large butterfly enclosure, impressive tropical plants and perhaps 5 different locations where the children touched sturgeon, rays, horseshoe crabs, sharks, trout, a legless lizard and a rat snake.  We were a fairly big group, so we had to move forward a little faster than we wanted to, but we went in one part, left, ate lunch, then returned to see the other half of it.  The highlights were tiny seahorses, only as large as your fingernail, an enormous sturgeon from the Volga River in Russia, assorted pipefish and the butterflies.  Lucia's highlight was touching the horseshoe crab, Lily loved playing in the huge fountain they have outside and Julia's favorite was the butterfly pavillion.  We finished the day with a long drive back to Nashville and dinner at Corky's BBQ for Mariela, Lily and Julia.

Tomorrow Ana Marie flies in alone from Los Angeles and will travel with us for the rest of our journey.  We'll pick her up in the afternoon and drive across Tennessee, heading towards Washington D.C.  We plan to arrive in D.C. on Sunday evening, we've got a tour of the Capitol Building on Tuesday the 16th (thank you Senator Feinstein).