Sea World and San Antonio

This weekend my friend Rachel and I took a trip to San Antonio for a couple of days of exploring Sea World. It was a lot of fun, and I took a TON of pictures (surprise, surprise). I'm going to post them in several posts because there are so many.

We left at 6:30 saturday morning for the 4.5 hour drive, and got to Sea World just after 11. We fed the dolphins, saw the sharks and penguins, went to the sea lions show which was hilarious, and watched as others fed the sea lions after the show. I tried to ride the Steel Eel roller coaster, but they shut it down when I was next in line to ride - BUMMER!!! There was a big storm rolling in, so we headed for the nearest shelter we could find, which turned out to be the Budweiser store, so we spent about 45 minutes in there with a bunch of other people as it POURED, thundered, and lighteninged (is that a verb?). When it finally let up to a drissle, we took of our shoes and walked through the sidewalk rivers to the Believe show with Shamu, which was incredible! After that we were going to ride the rapids ride, but we could see another storm coming in and decided we would be miserable if we were wet and cold. So we left Sea World, checked into our hotel, and headed to the Alamo and Riverwalk for dinner, since Rachel had never been there.

Sunday started out nice and sunny, and hot! We were sweating before we ever got through the gates! We started out at the dolphin tank again. They were so cool! I bought some fish to feed them, and could actually touch their noses as they were eagerly begging for the fish. I was finally able to ride the Steel Eel (lots of fun), and later the Great White (even better!), and we braved the rapids for a soaking good time. We also saw Believe again, because we both loved it. After getting soaked by the rapids and then the rain that hit as we were eating lunch, we decided we might as well hit the Lost Lagoon and get all the way wet. We enjoyed the lazy river, but just as we were getting to the top of the line for the water slide, they shut it down because they saw lightening in the distance. Bummer again! We thought about waiting out the storm, but decided to just hit the road for home, since it looked like the rain was going to settle in for a while. We quickly dressed and headed for the car, and the rain hit right when we got to the parking lot, so our drive home was wet and chilly. But we stopped off at IKEA to change and shop, and finally made it home around 10 last night. It was a long but really fun weekend of friendship and enjoying God's magnificent living creation.

Here are a few random pics. I'll post dolphin, sea lion, and Believe pics separately.

(kids playing in Saturday's downpour)

(waiting out the rain in the Budweiser shop)(if you look closely, I'm in the first seat of the second car) (Remember the Alamo!)
(the Riverwalk)