Albuquerque BioPark

Our road trip included a stop at the Albuquerque BioPark, which was fantastic, again I highly recommend it. The park includes the aquarium, the botanical gardens, the zoo, and something called Tingey Beach which is a bunch of lakes and ponds. We only had time for the botanic gardens and the aquarium. Here I am in one of the gardens. Dylan and I were trying to turn off the giant faucet.

Inside the botanic gardens campus they have a butterfly house. One of the doscents pulled us aside (not many visitors that day, I guess) and related a TON of really interesting information about butterflies, caterpillars, and chrysalids. Here is the "nursery" in the butterfly house. You could see butterflies in various emergent states here.

We also checked out the aquarium. Dylan got a little stressed about the manta rays. He was consoled by confiming that there really was glass there. The rays were having a great time freaking out the visitors by swimming slowly up to the window and then suddenly swooping up the glass.

YOU MUST VISIT ALBUQUERQUE.