My niece is visiting from Japan and we are trying to show her Charleston. At her age she is not much interested in the old historical houses and history of the city, so we’ve been looking for alternative sites. We first took her to Charleston County’s Water Park in North Charleston. It has a wave pool, four different water tube slides, a kiddie pool with fountains, and a few other small attractions. Admission was around USD 60 for the three of us, and while it was enjoyable at the end of the day, I still feel it is rather over-priced for such a small water park.
We also took her to the South Carolina Aquarium, which is located in the Charleston harbor and is always the talk of the town amongst those with children. I’ll go ahead and admit that for the price of admission I was disappointed with the number of exhibitions. The exhibitions cover the four major areas of South Carolina: mountainous west, hills country in the center, marshlands in the east, and the coastal areas. I had hoped to see more exhibits in the marshland area, but the aquarium area made up for it in the end.

The atrium with artificial rivers and steam to simulate the western part of South Carolina – the “rivers” had trout species and there were various birds up in the atrium trees

A rare albino American alligator – due to their color, they are unable to hunt well as they cannot hide themselves in the muddy swamp waters of eastern South Carolina. An albino alligator also suffers from sunburn, and sadly most never make it to adulthood. Normally such a large alligator would not be kept in captivity in the aquarium, but because it would not survive in the wild, perhaps it should feel lucky? It is a beautiful creature though.

A crustacean commonly found off of the cost of South Carolina – he seemed upset about being stuck in an exhibition

The most impressive exhibition is a large salt water take with many different kinds of fish species, including moray eels and small shark species. Some of the fish were over 100 cm in length yet they could turn instantly in the water to avoid collisions. It is hard to believe such large fish could be so nimble.

A proud-looking bald eagle – this one was injured or rescued from captivity if I remember correctly

Of all of the animals, my son enjoyed watching the skunks run circles around their exhibition area…I fear for the day when I have to take him camping…

This barn owl was as curious about me as I was him – I love the broad, flat face of the barn owl. And yes, he is standing on one leg, his other leg is tucked up into his feathers. What a show off!

Part of the port of Charleston…no ships…no containers…Charleston is losing out to Savannah (GA) these days. Unless the aerospace research center takes off here, there will be little industry in Charleston outside of tourism.
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