Henderson Beach State Park, Destin, Florida
It’s cold today! Cold enough we decided to spend most of it indoors at the Gulfarium. This is the place that housed, healed and released the turtles the other day. There’s supposed to be stuff to see and shows – kinda like Sea World, but not as big.
Turns out, most of it is outside! I guess that’s understandable since it’s Florida, but even though we had coats, we were pretty frozen by the time we left a few hours later!
We arrived about 9:30 and were surprised to find the parking lot relatively full. Seems a lot of people had the same idea! However, when we bought our tickets, I mentioned to the girl about them being busy today and she laughed and said, “No. Including you, there’s about 6 people here.” “Oh! Who do all the cars in the parking lot belong to?” “Us!”
That’s a lot of employees to pay with 6 admissions! By the time we left, things seemed to be picking up a bit, but not by much!
The Gulfarium opened in 1955. I took a few pictures to show you, mostly because of the way the people are dressed. So nice and so different from today!
Can you believe the prices?!?!?
We paid more than 20 times that!
Oh. And the lady selling tickets? She went on to overcome her fear of water and became one of the very first dolphin trainers in America and possibly the world!
The guy has a fish in his mouth!
The sign said this particular dolphin was measured as jumping 21′ in the air!
(not necessarily in this particular picture)
On our way to the first show, we had about 1/2 hour to look around at the aquarium exhibits, and even quite a few of the exhibits outside. Be prepared. You’re gonna see a lot of fish in this post. : )
That’s a stone crab.
Dun, dun . . . .
Dun, dun . . . .
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun . . . .
Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
Look at those legs!
I don’t know if it was cleaning time, or feeding time.
The shark didn’t seem hungry, tho.
Good thing!!
BTW – did you catch my “Jaws” theme reference? : )
Here’s a video of the shark aquarium.
This is a lion fish
Look! Little Nemo’s!!
See the ones hiding in the shell?
These are clown fish
Poison Frogs
There are at least three in the picture.
How can anyone look at something like a seahorse and possibly think there is no Creator?
Here’s a video of the seahorses:
And just take a look at this guy! He was digging sand out of his hidey-hole and spitting it on the ground! You can’t really see that in the video though.
The dolphin tank has windows all the way around, and the window heights vary so even little kids can see in without being picked up.
This is across from the aquarium, still inside.
Now we head outside, into the cold!
You can see the Gulf from just about anywhere outside.
Pretty neat!
Another fish tank outside.
They really should wash their windows!
These are otters.
Later, at the “otter chat” we attended, we learned they’re sisters.
During the chat, they were looking intently out the door into their regular home space. The girl talking said it was because it was time to eat. : )
Because of the cold, they were in their heated winter quarters.
First show – – Sea Lion Theatre. The show began at 10am and the lighting was such that you could hardly see through the glass. I tried going to the top, thinking we could see over, but no. Still, we were able to see most of it – at least the part right in front of us. There were 4 other people there (that makes all of us!) and the show lasted about 15 minutes.
Outside the sea lion tank.
The sea lion theatre.
This is us. All of us.
Here’s a video of the sea lions talking:
The grand finale!
The dolphin show started at 11am, so we looked around a bit more before heading over.
Red eared slider turtles
Pelican Cove
I never realized the white ones were so much larger than the brown ones we’re used to seeing!
Look at the high rise right next door. That’s kind of a shame, I think.
This is a video from when they were getting fed. We caught it right at the end, and if you look, the white one is swallowing a fish!
This is the size of a white pelican. There was a brown silhouette as well. Shoulda taken that one too.
They also had some birds, snakes and an iguana. No snake pictures this time. : )
The Dolphin venue was also outside, and by now we were really cold! Up here, the wind was whipping! We left our seats and walked all the way around. No relief! We ended up standing behind the wall. Better views from there at least!
A bit larger crowd. : )
There were even a few more once the show started.
I tried to find out where they got their dolphins from, but that page of their website wasn’t working. I was able to find out that one was born in 1965, has lived at the encounter since 1969 and is the oldest. She and a male had a son and all three of them are part of the performance now.
That’s all I got. If you’re looking for more, check out their website later and see if the “meet our animals” page is working yet.
During the course of the show, we learned that dolphins have no vocal chords, they make all those noises through their blow hole!! We never knew that! Pretty incredible!
Here’s a couple of videos to start us off!
Waving “hello” to the crowd
They got this one to come out of the water, kinda like the sea lions do.
This is a young, fairly new to performing dolphin. He’s 4 years old.
They had him try this move three times, and according to the trainers, there was something not quite right about each one. We thought it was pretty amazing!
One more video and we’re done with the show. Pretty good, huh?!?!
After the show, we knew there were still a couple of things to see . . .
Real
Not real. . . . I hope! They actually had quite a few gators. We were surprised.
View from the observation deck. There truly was nothing else to see from up here, except the pelicans.
. . . including a penguin chat. We listened to that, but not with our full attention. We
were freezing!
That penguin stood outside that occupied house all morning – – – up until it was time to eat,
Feeding time!
This girl fed them about 5 fish each.
The funny part was; after they’d eaten, they walked away! I guess they were full! : )
These guys were not a bit interested in their pen. They wanted to be next door with the other penguins! There was a girl in with them trying to get them to eat, but they weren’t interested.
The way out took us back past the otters.
Guess it’s nap time!
Sooooo cute!!
I uncovered a few facts about the Gulfarium:
In 2015, Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park celebrated its 60th anniversary. As one of the world’s oldest marine animal parks, we are thrilled to celebrate many milestones including:
– The first marine park to perform underwater shows on SCUBA gear, rather than the traditional full-helmet dive gear of the era.
– The first to record a dolphin jumping to a height of 21 feet.
– The first to successfully raise a stranded baby bottlenose dolphin.
– The first to develop a synthetic milk formula for bottlenose dolphins. This formula is still used today.
It was lunchtime when we were done, so we stopped at Sonic. We’d never been and this was a good time to try it. Not bad, but Wendy’s still trumps all the fast-food places! We had cheeseburgers, onion rings and FREE milkshakes. Yes, I said free! They’re free with every burger purchase. Not instead of pop, but just free! They were so thick, we could hardly drink them! But they were quite tasty once we finally sucked them up through the straw. 😊 The burgers and rings were good too.
Needing to walk a bit after that, we headed sort of across the street to check out a Bass Pro Shop. We’d never been and it seemed as good a place as any.
Oh my! It was quite a place! Huge and full of all kinds of things from boats to ATVs to home décor to kids toys and everything in between!
There was taxidermied stuff everywhere.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen stuffed opossum before!
The water is actually a deep aquarium with ginormous fish of some kind in it.
For some reason, as yet unknown, I was extremely tired this afternoon/evening. I forced myself to stay awake until about 9:20pm and then kicked Blaine off the TV and went to bed.
Probably a good thing, since he’s getting me up at 5:30am tomorrow.
TOTAL MILES: 2?
Year to Date: 100
Daily Average: 3.33