Tide Pools Instead of Museums?

Remember last year's plan to visit a different museum at least once a month? I didn't pull it off. Going places was possible, but spacing them evenly out, let alone spacing them evenly out and getting them to mesh with the actual calendar...that didn't happen. 

I thought we'd go to the Marine Science Center while we were at the coast, but it turns out they don't have an octopus on display right now. Since the octopus and the touch pools are the main attractions, we didn't go.  Instead, we spent a couple of afternoons clambering around on the rocks and looking at actual tide pools. 

There weren't informative signs, or helpful volunteers to answer our questions but we know most of the creatures by sight and we have smart phones that helped fill in the gaps in our existing knowledge. 

This was a lot more fun -- and a lot more exercise -- than walking through a museum reading signs. 

I've still got a  whole long list of places we plan to visit, but I'm scrapping the idea of doing one a month.