Once we got up there, we had some dinner and went to bed so that he could go to class Saturday and Sunday and the kids and I could have an adventure.
Saturday morning was thunderstorms with tornado warnings south of us. I hoped as we searched for coffee that the weather would clear and we could spend the day at the beach, but the weather had other plans. I gave up waiting for the weather to clear at about 10 and we ran through a downpour back to the room to take off bathingsuits and run back to the car to drive another 1.5 hours to Sudbury to spend the day at Science North . The woman at the parking booth commented that we were missing the Canada rush by coming a day early and she was right. It was not crowded at all and not only a weekend but also summer vacation. We checked out the extreme sports exhibit.
Then we checked out the rest of the museum. The first floor is a toddler tree house-not really our scene, so we headed to the 2nd floor and were met with a huge section of all sorts of nature paraphernalia. We noticed that all the cool stuff had a point value next to it so H asked the worker what that meant. Apparently it's a nature exchange. People can bring in snake skins, shells, rocks, butterflies, pinecones, etc. and get points for them and spend those points on something else. We didn't know about it but had fun checking out what people had brought in. They also had some insects to see up close including walking stick bugs, millipedes and cockroaches (um, no thanks). They had a small butterfly habitat as well.
The 3rd floor was the base of the science theater which was set in the centre of the museum between the 3rd and 4th floors. We saw shows about air, flying squirrels, liquid nitrogen. The kids really enjoyed them.
The rest of the 3rd floor was animals. They had a beaver, porcupine, skunk, fish, frogs, deer mice, turtles and other cool animals up close. They also took them out to fed them at various times.
The 4th floor was more exhibits. V enjoyed the skeleton one
We put their ages and heights into a computer and it said C would grow to 5'8", H to 5'4" and V to 4'11". I guess my brother got all the tall genes... my nephew is currently 5'10.
After about 5 1/2 hours at the museum we headed back just in time to grab the hubby and some dinner from the grocery store and binge on some basic cable (the kids love Discovery channel).
The second day the weather was much, much nicer, so we headed for a small waterfall just off the road near us.
We rode the carousel and tiny train across from the beach while waiting for the clouds to burn off..
The sun finally broke through and we headed to the beach in the 90+F weather. The lake felt great.
We were just about beached out when the husband finished with class and we picked him up and started driving home with no traffic this time. We passed Webers burger place at a non-meal time so we switched drivers and grabbed some milkshakes.
We got home and the little kids still wanted to see Canada Day fireworks, so we showered all the sand off, put on PJs and got to the park just in time to play a few minutes and see the fireworks before we all slept very soundly.
