We left Friday night in order for us to get an early start this morning as we are meeting up with our friend Mark Shimer again, this time for a visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. This is our first visit to this aquarium after our long infatuation with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

There are some beautiful exhibits here, and I can imagine that if I were a kid on a field trip, I’d fall in love with all things ocean.

I guess this finally answers the question once and for all if anyone else was wondering if fish had lips.

Jellies must be a universal display item in aquariums due to the weightless otherworldly floating tranquility they embody. Add some ambient music and mute the sounds from the rest of the aquarium, and the visitor nearly mind-melds with these gelatinous Medusozoas.

Before those jellyfish were allowed to get their tentacles into our brains, we managed to escape for a visit across the water at the Queen Mary. From here, we parted company with Mark and started making our way back across Los Angeles.

Our first stop was at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, where we focused on visiting the gardens.

From there, it was off to Puddingstone Lake at the Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas. When I was a kid, and my primary means of transportation was a bicycle my friends and I would pedal the 8 miles up this way to go fishing. This was a lot closer than the 15 miles each way when we’d push our bikes up into Los Angeles Crest Mountains north of Azusa or the 31 miles down Hacienda Blvd to Beach Blvd and Huntington Beach when we were feeling seriously adventurous. During our visits to L.A., I try to share with Caroline some of the sights I grew up with at the same time, trying to discover the places I never saw.

My father, who is now shorter, just had his left leg amputated though it was taken off below the knee, so it is longer than the right. He’s been on the “chipping away” plan with doctors starting by taking toes when gangrene set in years ago and then a bit more foot, the whole foot, the leg up to the knee, and then over the knee. At this point, you might wonder why he doesn’t start dealing with his diabetes in some sensible way. Well, first, he would have had to stop smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Once he finally accomplished that feat ten years after having his first and second heart attacks, he felt that his diabetes could be kept at bay with a strong will. Now considerably shorter than the six-foot frame he once had, he’s still not ready to deal with the ravages of diabetes and would rather live in denial. Visiting my father is difficult.