A fun day exploring the world (and the universe)

This week we took a day trip to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It's an easy drive from our house but I haven't been there since I was a teenager, and they just finished a HUGE remodel! It's an amazing museum and aquarium, and we had a ton of fun!

Bok Boy looking at the rays through a hole in the walkway.

Little Miss and her "big girl" cousin looking at animals.
There's a gorgeous 4 story rainforest, and you can see the whole rainforest

from underneath the lake at the bottom of it.

The Tyrannosaurus skeleton is a huge hit with everyone, children and parents alike!

Coral Reef Fish

One definite note, if any of you should decide to visit, please don't decide to go on the first nice day (aka not raining) of a holiday week! We stood in line outside for over an hour to get in, and if we hadn't bought our tickets early we wouldn't have gotten in at all! They announced at about 11am that they wouldn't be selling any more tickets because the museum was too full, and they were having to wait for people to leave before anyone else could go in.

It was, however, an amazing trip, even with waiting for so long! The major downside was that Claude, the albino alligator, was injured and wasn't on display. The kids (and I) were really looking forward to seeing him, but apparently he made another alligator mad and the other guy bit him!

The planetarium show was a little disappointing, as it wound up being essentially an Imax movie about saving the planet rather than having much information about the solar system.

For a relatively small museum/aquarium/planetarium, it managed to easily fill a whole day, and children 6 and under are free, so it wasn't overly expensive.