Sea World, Orlando - Summer Pics

I'm reposting this from a few weeks ago. If I'd realized there was going to be this great promotion in August, I may have simply waited.

This past week was a tough one at work. Yesterday morning, my husband and I were both ready for a small diversion, and he decided to do some yard work. Instead of helping him, like I normally do, I finished up a couple of projects I was working on in my office and then bathed the dog. When we finished at the same time, we jumped in the pool together, and then I shot a few pix of the baby lizards around the perimeter of the pool...



You can tell how tiny these little guys are by the screen behind them...



About that time, a storm moved in, and we went inside for a while. It didn't look like the storm was going to stick around, and neither of us really felt like working any more so we decided to go to Sea World. I took my camera... and it was the first time I'd been there with a camera other than the one on my phone, which is at best, unreliable. Sometimes, it takes a picture of something somewhere in the vicinity of where you were aiming, but not always.

So we were off to Sea World, which is about 25 minutes from us, and to which we have annual passes. We go there frequently, just for a little exercise, a good turkey sandwich and a bit of fun. Since we go frequently, we don't try to take in everything in one day. Yesterday was no exception to that. We walked around the park a couple of times, looking for photo ops...


You can see the storm which had just moved through and left a drizzly rain behind it which did nothing to damper our spirits.


Then we made our way to the hospitality center where we enjoyed a free beer and a turkey sandwich, with an audience of one. He stood by our table the whole time we were eating, but I think he was actually there to share our umbrella as much as to get that bite of sandwich we gave him when we finished.


Then we walked some more, and took in our favorite roller coaster, the Kraken... and checked out a bunch of shops, aquariums at Shark Encounter...

It was too dark in the building for me to figure out how to change the camera settings, so the photos aren't that great but I still loved the effect so I decided to include them here.



Above and below are the Lion Fish...



I can't remember if this was where we saw the Yellow Tang... but it seemed a good slot for him...



and then there are these amazing-looking salad-resembling creatures, one of my new favorites...

Sea Dragons!



He's a little clearer here but still very vegetarian-looking!



Then I couldn't wait to get to my favorite, Pacific Point Preserve... where it appeared to be that time of year for the Sea Lions. There were numerous pups to see.







These were my favorite mother and pup...


Of course there were the babies who weren't with their mothers as well... but these two had a babysitter.



And there were plenty of grown-ups without babies...



I thought this one was particularly cute...


I can't say what the difference is between a Seal and a Sea Lion so I'm sure I often get it wrong... but I think the next one was a Harbor Seal.



Try as I might, I could not get a good shot of one of the Sea Lions at play... all my efforts looked something like this one:




There are birds which hang out at Pacific Point as well... I think (?) this one is an Egret...



and this old guy is a Stork which only looks like he was carved out of wood.




And there is always an audience like this one present, watching...


As we moved on out of Pacific Point Preserve, this guy voiced an objection... after all, we hadn't offered him anything to eat...




We tried to go on Journey to Atlantis, but alas, the line was too long for our patience and we opted to check out the nearby aquarium instead, because I always love the Jellyfish!



Above and below are the Moon Jellies...


And then there are the smaller Comb Jellies...





They are all fascinating to me but hard to take a good photo all the same...




And that just about finished our outing for the day, but before we left, we stopped and I shot this last photo... which, though it looks completely surreal to me, is completely unedited. I know it's a well-landscaped photo shot but still... this is so gorgeous I came home and put it on my desktop!




I hope you enjoyed joining me for a short jaunt to Sea World Orlando... I'll try to vary my routine for you next time!