Day 20

This morning began as most with me getting things ready for our travels after a shower.  The kids woke up bouncing ready for the cereal the only get once a year.  This stuff is so unnaturally colored and sugared it just makes my stomach turn.  This coming from an admitted cereal addict that would have roughly 10-18 boxes of cereal in the pantry at a time!

Someone please convince Ryan to wear her hair down!  She refuses to cut it but also refuses to wear it down!  It's so pretty!

Once again we were packed up and on the road by 9:30 this time headed to a pretty fun looking science museum.  What caught my attention was a panda IMAX movie that I just knew our panda-loving Ryan would want to see.  And for my other science museum snobs I knew there was plenty for them as well.  This museum would have to rate for one of our top 3 museums.  Usually we spend roughly 3 hours at museums but this one we were still there after 6!  And we mostly skipped an entire floor!  The kids had so much fun!

First we had to put together some ice age dinosaur bones and visit the temporary Ice Age exhibit.

We volunteer at home with the archaeology network trying to find some Pensacola area artifacts, so the kids are used to sorting through dirt.  But this was 9,000 year old dirt found in New York! Apparently there was an entire mammoth skeleton found in a backyard pond and this was some of the dirt around it they were having kids sort through.  They found some of the tiniest shells I've ever seen!

This is one of those boards with all the pins so you can put your hand of face up to one side and your outline shows on the other side.  They had some animal print tiles you could press in.  Check out that grizzly bear paw!  The moose is at the top - wow!

After the IMAX movie, a snack, and the Planetarium show we headed to the actual museum and were overwhelmed with the amount of activites and learning opportunities!  There were animals, and computers, and hands-on exhibits, oh my!

Laney and Ryan polished some rocks - they turned out great!

Here is what our children would look like if there were moose!

A random porcupine waddling around the science museum...

We did several news reports on tornadoes and life on Mars!

This was a hands down favorite of the whole museum.  Who knew you just needed to hand our kids a couple phones and they would be thoroughly entertained?!

I think they could have raced for hours if we'd let them.

Laney and I built this one!  This is when Lego instruction experience comes in very handy!

Our last stop was the dreaded bed of nails!  Even Grammie did it!

Once we finally decided to leave, we made the hour drive to the park then met Grammie and Laney for dinner at the lodge where Brayden and Grammie would be staying.  The dinner was outstanding once again!  The kids tried the local fish and shared Ryan's grilled cheese while Grammie and I had other local fish entrees.

It definitely showed how little we eat out at nice restaurants as the kids were unsure where to put their bread and which utensils to use for what!  We all thoroughly enjoyed our food and after a peek at Grammie's room, the girls and I headed back and crashed for the night. Science is exhausting!

Day 19

We have so much room in the tent now!  I am usually rolled on or at least kicked in the middle of the night but with Ryan gone the other two were all spread out in their own big areas all night!  We fell asleep to the constant woosh of the waterfall and woke to woodpeckers and robins.  We were to meet Grammie and Ryan pretty early to head into Canada, so I got up and wrote for a little while then started breakfast and more packing.

Once we got on the road, we were planning to stop for a big stock up trip for fruit and snacks as well as gas for the drive.  We weren't sure what kind of stores we'd see traveling through the backcountry of Ontario, so we decided to stop at Walmart. Little did we know there were Walmarts right on the other side of the border!

I'd chosen Sault Ste. Marie as our crossing point because of the opportunity to see the Soo Locks. We can watch movies and read books about it all day long but to see it in action I think is a priceless learning opportunity.  This is a different kind of park as it's completely run by the CCC and the Army.  We went to the visitor's center first to see if there were any good displays or movies to introduce the concept, but the movie was way outdated and a little too history detailed, so we decided to walk over to the viewing platform to take a look.  As we were walking up a huge ship was leaving and another was just about to come in.

Here is that ship just as it's coming in:

And here it is as it's just about to go out:

All this happened in a matter of 10 minutes.  We stayed to watch a tour boat with a few smaller private boats going the other direction too. What an amazing engineering marvel to see up close!

Crossing the border was a breeze this year!  Of course, the crossing agent didn't ask me about pepper spray this time!  Within about 2 hours we were setting up our spot at Chutes Provincial Park.  I'd chosen this park only as a stop over on our way to a more popular park that I didn't think we could drive to in one day.  The park was really beautiful and our spot was huge!  The kids showed Grammie just how fast we can set up our tent and be ready to go!  Next we went to Grammie's cabin to check her and Laney in as well as have a nice, fresh meal she'd ordered ahead.

The view was spectacular across the bay.  As our chef was cooking, we walked down to the beach for a few minutes to check out the water.  Technically this was park of Lake Huron so we made sure to put at least a toe in.  It didn't seem quite as cold as Lake Superior, but it definitely still took my breath away!

Our dinner was spectacular!  We all had hand cut french fries and fresh pickering - the kids had battered and Grammie and I had blackened.  Laney thinks we should make those french fries for Dad sometime!  Unfortunately, I forgot to have our host take a picture of all of us.

After she finished, Ryan grabbed the camera again for a few shots.  She's getting much better!

Once we were all finished we all headed back to our campsite to cut and store all the fresh fruit to divide between our coolers.  Grammie would be traveling with a different kid each day so they both would need some snacks along the way!  Once Grammie and Laney left, the other two took showers and we headed to bed.  Ryan performed a short fox ninja show before we made up some stories.

These two requested to have stories about a tiger and cougar who are best friends whenever they are together.  As I'm telling them these stories, I am reminded of all the stories my dad used to tell me and Chris about two characters called Hop-a-long and PieFace.  I wish I could remember some of them!  My cougar and fox stories surely aren't as interesting, but they both hang onto every word.  My apologies to the writers of Lion King as I blatantly stole one of their plot lines for mine.

With a promise to tell chapters 4 and 5 in the morning, Brayden and Ryan are asleep within 30 seconds.  This park is so unbelievably quiet!  Once I slide into my sleeping bag I believe I'm out in less than 10 seconds!  Dave just rolls his eyes at this fall asleep gift Ryan and I have!