Sleepover With Grandma

Like many other publicly-funded agencies, the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a variety of programs to educate their members and to raise funds. One of the most popular is the sleepover, when children and their parents or chaperones are invited to sleep on the floor of the aquarium among the watery exhibits.  For her birthday this year, my soon-to-be-eight year old granddaughter requested an encore to last year’s sleepover. Remembering the previous year with pleasure, I was happy to oblige.

Getting to Monterey

We are lucky enough to live only an hour from Monterey, so on the day of our sleepover, we drove there in the late afternoon. On the way, Bean talked excitedly about where we would eat and where we would sleep. Because the lights would turn off first in the Jellies exhibit (and that’s 11:00 p.m.) I had requested that area. Bean really wanted to sleep with the sea otters. She brought her stuffed sea otter from the previous year, and was adamant that her stuffy wanted to sleep with her relatives.

Once we got near the aquarium we parked in a garage that allowed overnight parking and went in search of dinner. We looked forward to sitting above the ocean and perhaps having a nice view. Whoops – I should have made reservations for that.

After visiting and rejecting three restaurants because of the long lines, then standing in line for half an hour at the Sardine Factory, we decided to lower our expectations.  After a short walk we found a pub with empty tables. It was hidden from the street and small, but they they advertised “The best fish and chips in Monterey,” so that’s what we ordered. The claim was valid – the fish was tender; the crust crisp, and they came with English malt vinegar. The people at the next table recommended a dessert called Sticky Toffee Pudding, so we ordered that too. It was as advertised — sticky and delicious. We both declared it a good choice.

After dinner we walked back to the car and retrieved our sleeping bags, pillows, and sleeping pads. We put on our backpacks and began transporting our bedding down the hill in a wheeled teacher cart. It was only a few blocks to the aquarium but we stopped several times. We got there, however, by 7:00 p.m. as required. Once we checked in and received our wrist bands, we stashed our possessions in an empty room and began to  roam around the aquarium. The staff also ran nature films, craft activities, a photo booth, and a scavenger hunt. I voted for a movie first, but Bean headed straight for the sea otters. Much to her disappointment, their lights were off and they were all asleep.

At the Aquarium

We weren’t able to go downstairs to the Viva! Baja! exhibit either, because some of those animals needed to sleep too. Most areas were open however, and Bean managed to get to all of them.  Because it was Member Night in addition to the sleepover, an open bar was serving adult drinks.  While Bean made a sea creature out of construction paper, paint and feathers, I slipped away to buy a glass of wine, along with several other sleepover parents and grandparents. We all agreed we deserved it for what lay ahead.

At 10:00 p.m. it was time for Orientation in the auditorium (mostly guidelines for locating our sleeping areas and conducting ourselves during the long night ahead), then we went to the cafeteria for a bedtime snack. We were now allowed to retrieve our bedding and go to the Jellies’ exhibit.  We set out our sleeping pads and sleeping bags under the sardines that went around in circles in the ceiling. Bean decided that was actually a pretty neat place to sleep after all.

Bean wanted to read for a while before going to sleep, so she got out her book and settled down on her sleeping bag. Then she asked to go back to the aquatic birds exhibit, which was now nearly empty. She thought it was cool to play with the interactive exhibits without having to wait for other children to finish. After we finally put on our PJs, we lay on our backs and looked at the sardines and listened to the jellies’ hypnotic music until we fell asleep.

I woke up around midnight. Outside the exhibit older children were still roaming around with the blue flashlights we had all been given. Inside the Jelly exhibit, though, Bean’s arms and legs were wrapped sweetly around me and the lights and music were off. It was eerily quiet.  In the dim blue light I could just see the sardines. They were swimming slowly now and some were bunched up and still. I decided they were sleeping. After a short interlude, I was too.

The Jelly lights and music awakened us at 7:00 a.m. and an announcer asked us to stow our bedding and head for breakfast. Groggily we served ourselves oatmeal and eggs and potatoes, juice, and I had two cups of coffee, We joined several other sleepy families on the deck to eat. The sea otters and sea lions splashed around in the bay and we watched them while we ate. When we came inside, Bean noticed that the sea otters were awake now so she took her stuffy to visit her “relatives.” Shortly after that the gift shop opened and I bought her a stuffed baby sea otter before we picked up our bedding and walked back to the car.

Oh, But We’re Not Done Yet

Even as we walked up the hill, Bean was plotting to extend our adventure. “Could we go to the beach for a while, Grandma, then could we hike up the tall dunes we passed on the way South?”  I was feeling mellow, so I agreed to both activities. For two hours I sat on a rock while my happy granddaughter played in the water, then she recruited me to help her build a dam. Eventually we drove a further north and hiked up to the top of the tallest dune, which she has wanted to do as long as I can remember.  After that effort, which involved parking in a shopping center and making our way across several crosswalks and traversing bike paths, not to mention hiking uphill on shifting sand, we treated ourselves to a Panera Bread lunch. Our sleepover adventure finally culminated around 2:00 p.m.at her mother’s front door.

Tiring as it was, this was a wonderful grandma-grandchild outing. I know it will be a precious memory for me, and I hope it is for her also. I encourage you to look for programs like this in your own communities or those of your children – zoos and aquariums commonly host sleepovers, but so do some museums, exploratoria and even playgrounds.

I’d also love it if you would share your own experiences taking children or grandchildren on Grand Adventures – please use the comment section for that.

Marlene