Here’s a few more pictures from our mini-vacation to California. The one above was from the aquarium in the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  Katherine LOVED the aquarium.  The brightly colored fish and constant motion had her enthralled.  This place really was awesome even for big kids like me – it features a planetarium, a 4-story rainforest exhibit, the aquarium, and a lot of other exhibits. If you’re planning to spend time in SF, this place is well worth the $25 entrance fee.  Just be aware if you’re from out of town – San Fran is a maze of one way streets and they have a grudge against left turns.  Be prepared to make three quick right turns instead of a left if necessary.  Once you get that figured out, driving isn’t really that bad there.

Click through for more pictures.

This one is also from the Academy, but this time we’re in an underwater tunnel in the bottom of the rainforest exhibit. It was cool to see the big fish and even a turtle swimming overhead.  As you can see, K was pretty unimpressed, but Jenn was fascinated…

Credit for this early-morning shot goes to Jenn. In a rare role-reversal, I scooped up Katherine one morning at Grandma & Grandpa’s house while Jenn went for the camera… Mostly, though, it was Grandma and Grandpa who were holding Katherine.  Got to get their baby-time in when they can.

When we got to San Francisco, K spent a lot of time in her stroller, so naturally I had to grab a couple shots of her there.  Especially when she was so stylish and happy!

That last stroller pic is actually an HDR blend of three frames to capture the large contrast range from the relatively dark setting in the shade of the tea shop in the Japanese Tea Garden (just across the way from the Academy of Sciences) and the relatively light, sun-bathed background.  A quick trip through Photomatix sorted everything out.

And finally, I got this piercing look from K in the same underwater tunnel as before.  I like her smiling pictures but her observing, considering, I’m-figuring-you-out look is a quite frequent one as well, so I’m glad I captured it.  I loved the quality of the light filtering down through the water.  Especially since I couldn’t use flash (might harm the sensitive fish), so I had my 50mm lens set at f/4 and bumped the ISO to 800.