the big trip, day 6, pt 2

We could easily have stayed at Crane Beach all day. As it was, we left reluctantly at about 3:00 and headed about 20 minutes back south to Gloucester, MA, where we visited the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center, which had three touch tanks for the boys to experience. The whole aquarium there was little more than a patio with some gigantic fish tanks in it, but our two kids loved it. Will aspires to be a marine biologist one day, but he wasn't too keen on touching any of the animals. There as a blue lobster, a couple of sea stars, a sea urchin, and some hermit crabs and snails that you could touch. There was also a tank with some very curious stingrays, who would come right up out of the water to meet you at the edge of their tank. We were fascinated by this particular tank. It not only had stingray, but it also had flounder and another very strange fish called a sea robin fish. Here's a video that Jim took of it:

We continued our trip along the North Shore to Rockport, MA, a beautiful more touristy town that is also an artists' colony. There are a lot of art galleries in this town, but we arrived too late in the evening to take in many of them--plus with a 5 and 7-year old in tow, it's not exactly easy to leisurely take in any art galleries. The people of Rockport were incredibly friendly, helpful people. We took refuge from a downpour in an art gallery, whose owners let us know that we could borrow their umbrellas to go and purchase a couple of our own. And then another shop owner pointed us to the perfect, family-friendly, cost-efficient place to eat seafood while it rained--it had a gorgeous view of the water, and we ate seafood andwatched out the windows as the rain finally stopped. We spent the rest of our evening taking in the sights of Rockport and eating the gigantic ice cream cones that you can only find in Massachusetts. The red building in the picture above is called, "Motif #1" because it is painted so often by art students in the area. We took lots of pictures of it; I am sure you'll see some Jim Heston renditions of it soon.

A family picture before we left