At the Mirage Hotel and Casino here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, you can escape some of the chaos outside and dip into serene pools where dolphins will splash and play alongside. Of course, that privilege does not come cheaply, as their trainer for a day program will run you about $500 per person. Yikes! I have to admit, though, that it totally looks worth it if you've got the cash to pay for it. It's a five hour long experience, so really that's only $100 an hour, which isn't that bad considering it comes with breakfast, lunch, and time spent actually interacting with the dolphins. Our visit was not so extravagant as to include that, but we were still able to see a good bit of the dolphins and we had a lovely time. One thing I'm definitely curious about looking into, now that I know it exists thanks to their official website, is their painting with the dolphins experience! As a human who likes to paint and play with color, I imagine it'd be quite the experience to create with another sentient being. Dolphins, after all, are highly intelligent. There may be some debate about whether their intelligence actually exceeds our own, but I tend to agree with Douglas Adams on the matter;

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Smart man, that Adams.

A real hoopy frood.

So, while our visit with the dolphins didn't entail splashing around in the water with them, we definitely enjoyed watching them interact with the trainers and play a catch amongst themselves. There was an adolescent swimming around with the females, and it was super cute seeing as it alternated braving out on its own and shadowing its mum. Thankfully for us, they didn't attempt any double-backwards-somersaults through a hoop while whistling the star-spangled banner, so we can presume that our planet is safe from demolition. Is there such a thing as too many Douglas Adams references? Perhaps, but this is not the place nor the time for such concerns.