Hello everybody :)
Well this weekend was a bank holiday weekend for the Canadians. We decided to be cultural and visit the museums – Science North and Dynamic Earth.
Saturday we went to Science North. It was awesome. We were going to pay for a three day passport which would allow us admission to both museums and to the IMAX and planetarium. But on arrival we found that it was cheaper to get a year admission – which means Jessica, you will be visiting both with us as we get a 50% discount on guests :)
Science North was brilliant – it has three floors; the first floor there are lots of live insects and some dead ones too – and there is a butterfly area. The second floor there is a beaver, porcupine and skunk as well as snakes, turtles, flying squirrels and bats. On the third floor there are science experiments – which are very interactive and mainly aimed at children but we found them fascinating :)
The animals were brilliant – the beaver was busy cleaning himself but at night apparently he wanders out and completely rearranges/ demolishes his enclosure!! We watched him being fed and were told that like a small child he doesn’t like eating his greens! He cannot be released into the wild as he got frostbite on his tail which is why he was rescued by the science center.
The skunk has had her smelly glands removed so she is very pleasant to smell! she slept most of the time we were there but did race up and down her enclosure a little.
The porcupine was fascinating – neither one of us realised they could climb trees, they actually hibernate up in the native evergreens here; they just climb up high and go to sleep, between the porcupines fir and the tree’s foliage they stay warm enough. He was a very amusing character and had been orphaned when he was about 3 months old so the science center rescued him. They take him for two walks a day – not on a lead but outside by the lake – he is very tame.
We also did some rock polishing whilst at the museum – it was great fun and we will be going back to have another go!! Hannah can now see why Ross in Friends was so happy to find his own rock polisher!
On Sunday we went to the Planetarium within Science North and watched Violent Universe. They also talked about the meteor that created this region of Canada and gave it the rich resources that it has today, the meteor was about 10 – 15km across, traveling at 20km per second which would have been the end for any animals on the surface of the earth, had they existed at that time. Hannah now believes we are all going to die in the year 2036 when a meteorite is said to be colliding with Earth – if it happens it would be like a nuclear explosion on every square kilometer of the Earth’s surface. Yet another thing for her to worry about. We had the option of watching ‘Violent Universe’ – more for adults or ‘Earth, sun and Starts’ – more for children – we now think we would have been safer with the second choice.
We also went to see Pirates of the Caribbean in 3D which was brilliant :)
Yesterday we went to Dynamic Earth and took the underground mining tour which was fascinating. They have a short bit of mine under the center which we went down into via a lift, its about 65m under ground, not very deep when you bear in mind that one of the local mines here is 2.3km at its deepest point. They showed us a mine from the first part of the 1900’s, then into the 50’s and up to present day. There are various simulations of mining equipment which are like computer games, but with the proper drivers seat and controls.. Cool! I could have stayed there for ages!
We went for a drive around, down to Lively, then took a right and.. well see the map:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&so…
We saw the railway track on that route at 46.521078,-81.053397 – you can paste that into Google maps and it should go right to where we parked next to the railway track.
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