Animal Handling- Loveland Living Aquarium and Scales and Tails

When our kids are between 8-10 years old, we take them on two special trips. One parent takes them on a bigger trip, and one parent takes them on a trip closer to home. A couple of years back A1 went to Seattle with Dad. Recently, it was my turn to take him on a closer to home trip of his choice. Our animal loving son asked to interact with as many animals as possible, specifically snakes and sharks.

Enter Loveland Living Aquarium in Draper and Scales and Tails in Kearns. At Loveland Living Aquarium, you can feed both the stingrays and penguins. With the stingrays there are a couple of sharks who also come to take a nibble. If you want to do something extra at the aquarium, but don't want to pay a lot of extra, I would recommend feeding the stingrays. A1 enjoyed the stingrays and was particularly happy to feed a shark (his 3rd favorite animal).

The penguins were cute, too, the price to feed them changes depending on the day. You can check their calendar to get the best deal.  (By the way, general admission prices range from $18-28, and there are discounts for those on fields trips, homeschool days, and SNAP/WIC families.)

If you don't want to pay the extra to feed animals, you can still have an amazing interactive experience at the tide pool and stingray pool, where you can still pet them. 

And there is plenty to see and do, including the new-to-us virtual reality motion experience (ECCO Voyager). 

After a day with A1's 3rd favorite animal, it was time to move on to his favorite type of animals-reptiles. Scales and Tales offers 1 hour interactive tours at their zoo for select hours. They also travel to school, birthdays, and other groups to showcase their animals and bring reptile education to the people.

Baby turtle

A spider, too.

And A1's number one favorite animal in the whole world, the snake.

He got to hold this beauty, too, with a bunch of other kids. His favorite part was, because he was on the tail end, the snake used him as an anchor by wrapping its tail around him.

He loved visiting Scales and Tails so much, that he went home and recreated his own reptile zoo.