Anniversary.... A day of Fish

1 year anniversary on Sunday May 31st 2009. I was having a hard time figuring out what to plan for our first anniversary, then the night before (saturday) I had a light bulb moment and was like, "oh, I'll take her to the aquarium in Denver. The only other aquarium we had been to together was SHEDD in Chicago. Natalie loves the fish and other sights of the ocean so this was an awesome idea I had!!! ....... :) On the way to Denver, we had to stop in Edwards to pick something up. She would not tell me what we were picking up, but just that we had to stop. There is one bike shop in Edwards that we have visited before, so I just thought she must have gotten me something to do with cycling. I asked her if it had anything to do with cycling and she said nope, and when we pulled up to the shop of Alpine River Outfitters I figured she must have gotten my a gift cert. to the fly shop or something. But in reality, it was oh so much better than that. She had gotten me a gift card to the fly shop, but it was not for merchandise. Nope, it was for a day long guided float trip for two!!!! AWESOME! Floating on the Colorado or the Eagle most likely. Natalie's manager at the Dusty Boot is a guide at this place. I think I will request him to take Natalie and I out on the river one day soon. How awesome! Natalie is going fly fishing with me!#$& :) I can't wait to see her catch a fish! The trout are really tearing up the salmon flies right now on the Colorado, so we can try to catch that hatch, or wait till the river slows a bit and fish a later hatch. There will be a blog about the trip coming soon.

When Natalie gave me this gift, all I said (of course after expressing to her how excited I was) is that it was IRONIC that she gave me a fishing trip..... She asked, "what do you mean", and I said, "you'll see when we get to where we are going." When we got to the aquarium she turned to me and said, "oh, I see, we both got each other something fishy......."
Denver aquarium in downtown Dever. Not as big as SHEDD in Chicago, but still really nice, and many exciting exibits!

This was a freshwater turtle with his head sucked into his shell. Looks kinda odd....

Don't remember what kind of fish this was, but I was able to get an extreme close-up of his face through the glass. They had a large pool filled with stingrays of all different sized. You could pet them and feed them. So we both touched them as they floated by, Natalie was extremely grossed out as they felt very slimy and icky. I thought i felt kinda cool.... Go figure!.... I spend 2 bucks and bought 4 of these little fishies to feed them. You had to hold them like this and tuck your thumb behind your other fingers so they didn't bite off your thumb..... The first couple that I fed were smaller and kind of gently latched on to my hand and used their tounge to remove the fish from my fingers. But it wasn't long before they started to get worked up into a feeding frenzy and the big dogs started moving in for the kill. One of the biggest ones in the tank came up and clamped down on my fingers and sucked the fish out. It was all fine and dandy, and I think it just surprised me more than anything, cause when he clamped down on my fingers, I ripped my fishless hand out of his mouth!!! Some pretty strong jaws on the bigger ones.

This was a ray in a different tank, we just felt like he was smiling at us..... Super cool to be able to see the entire belly side of the ray!