Bay City Aquarium

All my life our family has gone out of its way to visit Aquariums. I think I've seen at least one in every state along the East Coast or darn close to it. So when I saw the Official Linden Blog mention the Bay City Aquarium (Web; SLurl) I had to leap at the chance to visit. After getting a little lost because of not properly reading a sign, I found it and was not disappointed.

I was exploring with a friend who noticed that you could sit inside this dolphin-submarine statue. The building behind her is not well-marked, but be sure to look inside.

The expansive grounds are well-landscaped and encourage visitors to wander the various outside exhibits. Most are clearly tongue-in-cheek, some rather broadly so, but if you don't get the joke, be sure to read the signs.

Emperor Penguins?

A few of the outdoor exhibits require you to be be able to cam under the water's surface, like the Sea Turtle corral, but others can be seen via an underwater tunnel system.

Several Linden builds use this clever underwater tunnel system, including near my home in Nangrim. Upon entering a tunnel you'll probably understand the trick, but it is still kinda cool.

There are two indoor exhibits, one being the building shown in the first picture. Inside you'll find several fantastical creatures, just be careful which ones you click when you feed them.

Poor Xandah. I'll miss her. Anyway, moving on with the tour ...

The other indoor exhibit is classical zoo architecture, a gated structure with windowed, cramped cells. I felt sorry for the animals here (and in the big building) as they don't seem to have enough room. Then I remembered I was in Second Life and they are just prims. In fact, many of the "basic" animals you see are in your Linden Inventory if you wish to use them to populate your land.

Of course the Linden Moles are going to have their fun. Can you blame them?

The Lab could have done a substantially better job of promoting this build. The original blog post was but 13 words and had a tiny picture from the barely more encouraging Destination Guide. Maybe my post here gave up too much information, but I hope you decide to go out of your way to visit. It will be well worth your time.