Day 4 in Destin

Day 4 in Destin was a fun-filled day.  We visited the Gulfarium in Ft. Walton Beach - a small marine mammal park.  It was a perfect size for Parker and we were there for about 2 hours, which was even better!

The first show we saw was with the Sea Lions - Parker LOVED it!!!

This guy was itching his tail with his mouth - I had no idea they could bend like that!  I think he was warming up for the show - hah!

Ready for the show to begin!

The 3 sea lions - Molly, Star and Cory

Showing everyone how to clap!

Parker clapped so much throughout the show - it was pretty funny! 

 Star's ball trick . . .

And Cory singing

Parker thought they were great!

Cory was our favorite!

After the sea lion show - we watched some penguins play.  These penguins actually have their native habitat in South America, near the equator.  I had no idea there was a group of penguins that lived in the warm weather!

Parker and I checking out the shark tank!

Parker looking at the nurse sharks and lemon sharks.  It was so cool how they were literally laying on top of each other.  There was also a huge turtle in the tank with them.  It's hard to see in the picture below (but the turtle is in the top-middle of the picture below).

We watched the trainer feed the nurse sharks some fish.  It was quite scary!  When the shark would come to get the fish - it would make this loud, gasping sound and it was almost like a vaccuum sucking up a solid object from the floor - crazy!!

We stopped to watch the river otters play - they are super cute!

We saw some stingrays!

A mallard and a drake (Brad, I took this one for you!)

In the prehistoric section, we saw 2 gators and 4 huge tortoise!

These guys were funny.  The one on the right came out of his house and tried to take food out of the other one's mouth.  It reminded me of Parker trying to take food from others - hah!

HILARIOUS - don't you think??!!  Hah!

Getting ready for the dolphin training show!

So excited!

Alex weighs over 600 pounds!

Surfin'

Painting!

This was the finale - awesome!

We all thought that was super cool!

What a fun day at the Gulfarium!

We crossed the Destin bridge coming back from the Gulfarium.  The beaches are so pretty -white sand and the water is aquamarine - gorgeous!

We ate lunch at "The Shed," a famous Destin BBQ joint.  It was really good.  It had 2 levels and you ordered at the bar, then went and sat wherever you wanted (we chose to sit outside on the patio), and the waitress brought us our food in about 5 minutes.  It was awesome!

After Parker woke up from his nap, we decided to venture out to the beach and try again.  This time we got better results, but we also carried him and held him the majority of the time.

Someone on the beach made this - how cool is that??!!

We opted to stay in "normal" clothes to see if that would make a difference.  We still had some crying, but not as much as the first day!

SUCCESS!!!

The pelicans are pretty cool!

This wave did it for Parker.  We were doing so good, then this big wave came towards us and he was ready to head to the room - hah!

He almost was running towards those stairs - hah!

We decided we needed some meat and veggies for dinner, so we chose Cracker Barrel.

We all gobbled up our food.  I had meatloaf, my mom had baked chicken, and Parker had portions from our plates of chicken, carrots, mac-n-cheese and apples.  It was yummy!