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I promised you guys that the next vacation blog would be about dolphins. Well, here it is. We went to Dolphins Plus on Key Largo.

I?m having a little trouble choosing pictures for this part since Trinity and I were the ones that got in the water with the dolphins. Why is that a problem? Because I make it a rule not to put up pictures of her on the blog. Pedophiles and other not so nice people lurk on the web. Caution is better when it comes to the kiddo. It?s also why she?s not mentioned as much in the blog as she might be. That and what might be amusing to me, might be embarrassing to her. Again, a reason to be cautious. So, it?s been a problem, because most of the pictures have Trin in them, and it?s a full face shot. Those are not going up. See earlier reasoning. So, some of the best pictures are not going up on the blog. They?ll go in our scrap book, and the family photos, but that?s it. Sigh.

There is an orientation where you learn how to touch the dolphins in a way that they won?t find objectionable. They don?t like to be grabbed at. I guess we don?t either. You don?t get any pictures of the orientation because the kiddo is too visible in all of them. Also, it?s just a bunch of people sitting around picnic tables under a roof, listening to someone talk. Not that visually interesting. You have a chance to ask questions, and test your understanding of what you?ll be doing in the water, and what the dolphins may be doing.

Some of our first views of the dolphins:

Yes, that?s me standing in the shadows waiting to get in the water. I look so serious, don?t I. All pale and unhappy. I?m always pale, genetics being what it is. There were a lot of people from Norway, Sweden, and various Nordic areas, and I was paler than all of them. That?s just sad. Why unhappy? I had to put on a wet suit. The water was only seventy degrees, and water that is thirty degrees, or so, below body temperature will make you cold fast. So, the wet suit, but I hate wet suits. All right, I hate the way I feel and look in a wet suit. Jon says I looked cute, but he loves me, he always thinks I look cute. Trin is off looking at the sea lions. Yes, they had those, too. You can even swim with them. Trin wants us to swim with the sea lions next time. Works for me.

Here we are in the water with the dolphins. We got to swim with the alpha male, L. B., and alpha female, Dingy, and their baby Julie. The baby doesn?t do everything, but she?s learning. L. B. stands for Little Bit, which I guess he was once, but as you can see from the pictures, they had to shorten it to L. B. because there?s nothing little about him now. He weighs over seven hundred pounds. He was impressive, especially up close. Dingy stands, strangely, for Ding-a-ling, though no one explained why.
here you can see all three of them pushing against our feet, to move us around the pool. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to keep the legs stiff enough for the dolphins to push.

Here I am being towed by L. B. and Dingy. Trin got towed, too, but her smiling face is too visible, so you?ll have to be satisfied with just me. One of the things they taught us was how to hold onto the dorsal fin. It?s very delicate and could be injured, so you?ve got to hold on just so. Oh, and my hair looking so red? Not sure. I?m finding more and more when out in direct sunlight I?ve got all these red tones. The more sunlight, the more auburn. Weird.

There?s their instructor on the floaty thing. Being towed like this was very Flipper. More than anything we did with the dolphins, this was the classic thing you think of, at least for me.

Trinity and I watching our neighbors dolphin get some air.

L. B. and Dingy bringing us their hoop.
Julie, the baby, going through the hoop.
The rest of Julie going through the hoop.
Someone bigger going through the hoop.


Someone much bigger.

And now for the kiss. Trinity requested that she get her kiss on her palm, which was an option. I took it on the cheek, because when would I ever get another chance to feel a dolphin touch my face? Too weird, and too wonderful to pass up. Though, I don?t think the dolphin?s heart was in it. But, you know how hard you have to work to stay still in water when you?re treading, even in a life jacket? All right, I have trouble. The dolphins don?t. The dolphin, and forgive me L. B. and Dingy because I can?t remember whose beak was touching me, but the dolphin was almost motionless. Their skin feels not rubbery, but that?s the closest I can come. They actually feel very smooth, clean, and soft, but different. I?ll be struggling with ways to describe it better, and when I nail it, I?ll blog it.

Here we are getting presents from L. B. and Dingy. What presents? They fetch things from the bottom of their pool, and give them to you. Trin and I both got string algae. The same stuff that we?re always trying to get rid of in the pond at home. But what?s an irritation in the water garden seems cool and special when handed to you by a dolphin. Some other little girls got leaves. You can then take your presents to the photo area and they will put them in a laminated book mark. Trin and I both got it done. The two girls left their leaves in the bathroom, and when I brought it to them, because I thought they?d forgotten them, they didn?t want them. We?d just been in the water with these amazing animals. I wanted the slime we got, and they wanted nothing. I didn?t understand that, and neither did Trinity. But each to their own.

Pictures you missed because Trin was too visible, are the dolphins pushing us by our feet, our hands in front of us like Superman. Or would that be Aqua-man? Us, petting the dolphins. We got to rub their tummies. You rub in one direction and you stop before you get too far down the body.

We also got to have the dolphins do that stand on their tail thing, and we touched their flippers. I wasn?t very good at that, and lost my grip, and since we?d been told not to grab, well, I let my dolphin go rather than risk hurting it.
Me loosing my grip on the dolphin.

Not us, the people that were next. But we didn?t get to do this trick, and it was cool.

Air born dolphins. Too cool.

This is Castaway

She?s a deep sea dolphin, notice the darker gray color. She was rescued, then rehabilitated, and released, but she kept coming back in. They tried to release her again, but someone noticed that she didn?t interact with the other dolphins, at all. Someone got a bright idea and tested her further. She?s deaf. For a dolphin that is tragic, they find their food and navigate by echo location, and they are a very vocal people. So, she became a permanent resident at Dolphins Plus. She can?t do the behaviors the way the others do, because she can?t hear the whistles. But she has trainers that work with her while the other dolphins are worked with, and they do other behaviors with them.
Here?s one with more sunlight on her, so you can see herhead more.

This is one of the best views we got of the tail of one of the dolphins. I include it to talk about the souvenir that Jon, Trin, and I got. Dolphins Plus has necklaces of the dolphin?s tails. Not just generic tails, but each individual dolphin has it?s tail photographed, first because the tail can be like fingerprints, so you can recognize them. Second, so someone can sculpt and design a charm that matches each individual tail. I wanted one from the moment I knew what they were, but Jon shooed both myself and Trin away. I knew then, what he was doing, but it?s all about letting your sweetie surprise you sometimes. I distracted Trin, and let him buy the gifts for us. He got me the tail of the alpha male L. B. Trin got the Alpha female, Dingy. Jon bought Castaway for himself. We were all touched by Castaway?s story.

We also got the video of our time with the dolphins, which is extra, but was worth it. I mean how many times in your life do you get to swim with dolphins? How many times do you and your daughter get to swim together with dolphins? It was entirely too cool. Trinity declared this vacation better than Disney World, which is freaking high praise from her. I had to agree, though my heart still loves the Mouse Kingdom, it doesn?t have dolphins.

Oh, and why did just Trin and I do the dolphins? Jon and his parents didn?t want to. Mary and Art, though they thought it was very nifty, still are happy to watch if we go back. Jon though was quite taken with it all, and is willing to swim with the dolphins next time. Besides, if Mary and Jon had gotten in the water who would have taken the pictures for you to see?