I got tired of ruining everyone’s beach vacation with my whining and hacking, so we decided that on Friday we would go to the aquarium at Fort Fisher, NC and then pack up and head back to BFF’s house in Durham, NC.  Then I would just be ruining their regular weekend and not a day at the beach.

I’m not sure if every single day at an aquarium is school field trip day, but every day Chris and I try to go to one, the parking lot is full of buses and this time was no exception.  In attendance were the Holy Rams kindergarten class (including chaperones, filled two buses) and another middle school group that were entirely too cool to wear matching t-shirts who filled three buses.  We got in first and hoped to avoid the groups, but since we all wanted to watch the dive show in their huge 22 foot deep shoal tank, we had to tolerate them. 

My feeling on kids aged 12-17 is that they should be put somewhere where they can talk about how uncool everyone else is without interfering in other people’s enjoyment of activities.  They all stood around discussing Sienna’s hair and how hot Devon is and they couldn’t give a flying fig about the environment or anything in it.  The kindergartners tried to pay attention to the dive show, but after they asked where the fishes went to the bathroom (it turns out they don’t have underwater privys), they lost interest and moved on to the gift shop where they could make a mess and beg for souvenirs.

The aquarium has an albino alligator called Luna who was unusually active when we were there.  One of the staff volunteers told me that he’d never seen her this active and he agreed that she was probably hungry and would likely eat one of the Holy Rams as they were exactly the right size for alligator snacks.

Then we headed to Durham to enjoy Duke University’s excellent Urgent Care Clinic and Bandidos Mexican Restaurant (for medicinal frozen margaritas) where they have a burrito called ‘El Gigante’ and if you eat the whole thing, you get a t-shirt.  I successfully talked Chris out of this endeavor, anticipating some GI distress, but then he met this guy called, “El Scorcho”.

Welp, Chris ate El Scorcho’s burrito and there was a curse involved and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.  Fortunately there was no curse involved with my steak fajitas and the Chicken en Mole was so good that we went there for lunch Saturday as well so I could have a whole plate of it to myself.