Gulfarium-Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Today we visited The Gulfarium in Fort Walton Beach. The Gulfarium, opened in 1955, is the "oldest continually operated marine show aquarium in the entire world!"

Here's a photo of the Gulfarium dating to the '50s.

Here's the Gulfarium today.

One of the stars of the Sea Lion Show takes time out from her break to give us this candid pose.

These penguins are warm climate penguins...they don't like snow and ice.

Sea lion Molly shows us how she can balance a ball on her nose.

In the Multi-Species Show, sea lions and dolphins perform together. Here they demonstrate that they are friends.

The dolphins wait in anticipation of a scrumptuous snack.

These river otters love their fish.

Marlon trains this dolphin to eat out of his hand.

Doug takes a break to look down on Gulfarium's Dune Lagoon.

The Dolphin Show, featuring a 400,000 gallon tank, is the premiere show at the Gulfarium.

This is the home of performing sea lions who have retired. Here a couple are soaking in the sun.

Marlon couldn't pass up creating a video at The Gulfarium. Click below to view it.
For more pictures of Florida's Gulfarium, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/october/gulfarium-fort-walt/ .

To be continued...

Sasquatch Zoo, Crestview, Florida

Today we visited the Sasquatch Zoo in Crestview, Florida. This unique hands-on zoo was started in 1987 by Debbie Mattox with just goats and sheep.

Damaged by a flood of the Shoal River in 1989, the zoo was moved to its present location. Through the last 20 years, Sasquatch Zoo has added a wide variety of animals.

For $1 you can purchase a bag of Zoo Yummies to feed to the animals. And we attempted to feed them all. Some were more interested in Zoo Yummies than others.

This one would have preferred Zoo Steak or Chicken.

These raccoons, on the other hand, loved their treats.

The hardest part of feeding the critters was getting the treats through the fence from about 5 feet away. It was way too easy to actually hit the fence with the little dog food-sized treat instead of getting it through the hole.

Luckily, our bad aim didn't hinder those with long skinny arms.

Zorro and Zorra were just like two little puppies. In fact, the orange fox, Zorro, was raised from birth in Debbie's house.

Even the American Black Bear will sneak up on the little Zoo Yummie and eat it.

Skunks love Zoo Yummies so much that they don't even attempt to spray you when you make a lame attempt to get them through their double fence. The black skunk likes 'em...

and so does the white skunk.

This poor little Cottontop Tamarin didn't get a treat as his cage's mesh was too small for the Zoo Yummy to fit through.

The several big deer at Sasquatch Zoo all stared at us like this while we were holding the Zoo Yummies. They couldn't figure out why we wanted to feed them dog food.

Debbie feeds Sno-Balls to these lucky monkeys. The one taking the Sno-Ball in this picture was raised from birth in Debbie's house too.

This mother and 3-day old baby look on with interest.

For a pretty neat video we took of these and several other animals, watch the video below.

For more pictures of the Sasquatch Zoo, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/october/sasquatch-zoo-crest/ .

To be continued...

Bobbie Jean's, Mail, Fort Walton Beach

We decided to drive into Crestview. This grocery store named after Doug's mom and dad was about a mile from our campground, although Doug's dad is "Bobby" not "Bobbie".

In Crestview, we went to personally pick up our mail from our mail forwarding service, Myrvmail.com.

The next day we headed down to the Destin, Fort Walton Beach area. While there we came across Camping on the Gulf RV Park. Here you can camp right on the beach.

For $75 to $120 per night, you get to be up to your jacks in sand. While it looks neat, we would prefer the sites a few feet farther from the beach which come with sewer hookups and lower prices.

This area, known as The Emerald Coast, boasts beautiful green water and bright white sand beaches. As you can see, the beach wasn't too packed at this time.

Marlon took a break and drank a cola.

We next went to see incredible Navarre Beach.

This beautiful beach was the location of Navarre Beach State Park for only about 4 months in 2004, when it was damaged within months by both Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Dennis. The State then decided to give the park back to Santa Rosa County.

Navarre Beach features a lot of unique-looking houses priced about $600,000 and up, as well as condo and house vacation rentals.

Here a plane is landing at nearby Eglin Air Force Base.

For more pictures around Crestview and the Fort Walton Beach Area, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/october/going-to-our-mail-f/ and http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/october/going-to-fort-walto/ .


To be continued...