The air smells like warm rootbeer

My parents took Hazel and I to Albuquerque this past weekend. While the reason for our visit was a sad one, we were able to take some time to visit the zoo and the aquarium on Saturday and it was a blast!

We saw flamingos, tigers, snakes, and even a polar bear that Hazel believed to be dancing. He might have been, I’m not a scientist. Her favorite part was probably petting the llama and alpaca. Both were fluffy and let us pet their long necks while a very nice lady told us about their habitat and patterns of behavior and such. 

Hazel liked their big toe nails.

We then took a short train ride to the aquarium. Actually, it was a very long train ride. We went roughly 2 miles in about 20 minutes, but my daughter loves trains so we had a much better time than the other parents that seemed to be choosing between jumping off the train or throwing their children out by the quarter hour mark.

While the aquarium wasn’t huge, I loved watching her race around to look at the stingrays or try to climb on the seemingly endless swath of concrete seashell decorations. She climbed everything. I’ve never noticed how alarmingly low the barrier to open water is in some aquariums. Having children really opens up some incredible and varied new fears.

We left that same day and made decent time on the drive home aside from a long stop at Russell’s truck stop to see the car museum and play some arcade games. We watched several movies on my tablet in the car and I can now quote the entire first 15 minutes of Monster’s Inc. and Bolt from memory. Which, I know, is very impressive.

Even though traveling with a 2 year old is stressful, I had so much fun just getting away with my daughter for a little bit. She is so excited about everything and that makes me remember being excited too. her discovery is my discovery, in a weird, vicarious, emotional kind of way. I love seeing her learn, and watching her wax and wane between interest in the huge reptile in a cage and the little kid right next to her. It was a fun trip. 

And Coca Cola should really hit up that dancing polar bear. He’s got a bright future in sales.

tl;dr: Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan are actually very pleasant driving companions.