The Naturalist center was coooooool!!!!!!!!!! They had stuffed birds and stuffed polar bears and human skulls and snakes floating in an alcoholic mixture to preserve them and samples of rocks and bones and mammal skins etc. etc.! There was a deer that they stuffed in a jar and snakes were floating in the solution and the frogs were too. There were cabinets and when you opened them, there were drawers and if you pulled them out, they contained stuff like human jaw bones and and bird skins and snake skins and rocks and shells and stuff like that. There was a ton of stuffed birds along one wall and all the hawks and eagles seemed to stare down at you and there was a little stuffed chipmunk and two ferrets and a wolf. There were two foxes and a big, ugly, groundhog. The bills of allthe birds were plastic because the original ones would have corroded already. There were all sorts of fish with no pupils that were floating in the jars and seacucumbers and spineless creepy things. There were butterflies that were pinned down to a tray and beetles and cicadas and all sorts of stuff. There were two tigers and a skeleton of somebody from the 1900's. I asked" Are these people donors or do you go out and dig the bones up" and they dug them up. There were Inca people and Egyptian people and femurs and humors and all that stuff. I asked, "do you have things like brains floating in vinegar or organs and such" but they said they had no organs. Everything there was dead.

I went to Grayson Highlands. We drove 4 hours from Raleigh to there and hiked 5 miles to our campsite. It was raining during the hike so it was cool and wasn't stifling or super hot. The hike was all uphill and we had to rest several times to let the people at the back catch up. We got to a shelter and there was a little notebook there. Mr. Murrell told us it was a shelter log. There was also a pen so you could write your experiences in it. We hiked all the way up until there we saw a bald part on the mountain. I ran to it thinking that we had finally got to our campsite but it wasn't ours. We had to hike another mile to get to our campsite. There were a lot of horse manure around because people ride their horses up here. We got to our campsite and we put up our tent. Me and Penn were tenting together. We had to careful not to put our tent on manure. After that we went down to the spring to get water. There was no tap so you had to get water from a spring. We had a water pump and we use a pump. We also boiled it with a Jetboil. We had food and went to bed. In the night, it rained really hard and our tent leaked. We had a bad night. In the the morning, we ate, and hiked back down. You had to be careful about slippery rocks. We got down and drove home.

Ontario science centre

This museum was AWESOME!!!! It was huge too! We saw an imax about the Hubble first and then explored. We went to the Harry Potter Exhibition. We saw props and costumes that were in the movies. They were exactly the same as I pictured in the book. There were the Quiditch uniforms, the school robes, the Quaffles, the snitch, the wands, the boggart chest, the chess pieces, the talking pictures, the floating candles, the mandrakes, the potions book, etc. We also saw a science place where you could make your own shoe and make a movie. We also saw some cool materials, like the lightest solid on Earth which was called aerogel. There was also shape retaining metal. go here.

Niagara Falls

We went to Niagara Falls. First, we just walked along the top of the falls where there was a railing. We could see both waterfalls, Canadian and American falls. You see, Niagara is made up of 2 falls, American falls and Canadian Falls. Canadian falls is also called Horseshoe falls. We saw some machines where you put in a dollar and you could see far away but some were broken so you didn't have to put in a dollar to see. Well, when we got closer to the falls, there was a strong wind and it blew water up into your face and got you all wet. My brother said he was thirsty and I said to just "open your mouth". Well, we got back and went on the boat. They handed you blue ponchos that you wore. Then, we boarded the boat. A recorded voice talked about the falls and about kings and dictators looking at the falls and stuff. When we got close to the falls, the wind blew though our sleeves and puffed up our poncho so we looked like fat people. My brother held out a bottle to collect water from Niagara Falls but only got a few drops. He thought we were actually going under the falls! When got back on dry land, we ate something and then left.

RBC gold building

We saw a building with real gold in the windows. That is right! Real GOLD! 2 million dollars of it are infused into the windows. The government of Toronto said that they couldn't build the tallest tower so the RBC people decided to build the most beautiful building. It is pretty tall though.

MORE FACTS not part of my experience

1. They made it so that you cant get the gold

CN tower

Me, my dad and my brother went to the CN Tower. My mom didn't want to go because she said she didn't like tall buildings. It is the tallest building in the world. When we walked over to the CN tower, we saw a fountain where people threw a lot of trash in. We went inside the lower part of the tower where you pay for all your tickets and stuff. There was a machine where you walked in and it blew air on to you. Then, we got onto an elevator that went 15 miles per hour up the side of the building. I think these things were designed to scare little kids because the floor was glass and the walls were glass and everything was glass. When we got to the top, I looked out the window. The view was spectacular! You could see the islands,the other buildings. They looked puny compared to the CN Tower. There was a resturant at the top and it spun! We didn't feel it spinning because it spun once every hour. There was a upstairs but a mean lady said, "Get down unless ya want to eat!" Except she said it in a nicer way. The downstairs was the awesomest place I have to agree. It had a glass floor and these kids who were from a girl's school or something kept on jumping! It was REALLY scary because it was glass and you could see down to the bottom and there were spiky stuff down at the bottom! It said it could hold 14 large hippos and I'm pretty sure that all thoes girls and the other people were 15 large hippos. There was also a mini museum that showed facts about the CN tower. There was also a Skypod place which was the tallest man-made observation deck. We didn't go because it was around 20 more bucks per person. There was a outdoor observation deck where we saw some workers working. They were cutting right through the mesh and leaning on it too! I wouldn't do that for a million bucks! I really liked the CN tower and wish to go again.

Rideau Falls

We saw Rideau Falls. It was where the Rideau river met the Ottawa River. There was a small island there and we saw some beavers. We also saw a big gun from WWII. The actual falls had two parts. The first part was bigger and cooler than the second part and we picked dandelions and threw them off the bridge and watched them go over the falls.

Hershey Pa

Hershey Story was a museum about the history of Hershey. It had cool things in it like the first conching machine and an exhibit on Hershey special wrappers and boxes and logos. You could even make your own wrapper and add pictures that were on real Hershey wrappers back then. There were also exhibits on other chocolates like Reeses and Krakel and those stuff. It was cool because outside, all the streetlights were shaped like Hershey kisses and the road was brown like chocolate. But, I don't think that the residents liked us because we got honked 7 times!!! There was also the Hotel Hershey which was like a French chateau but it had a huge lawn and on it, spelled out in giant letters that were made with stones, it said WELCOME HERSHEY. We also saw the Hershey amusement park too. It had 2 really tall rides that looked pretty scary but we couldn't see past them. We didn't go to Hershey park but we did go to the Chocolate world. When we got inside, we went to the chocolate tour. It was a slow ride that showed every step of the chocolate making process. Some of it was faked, I have to agree because they put mirrors on both sides to make it look like there was an infinite chain of conching machines or stuff like that. Most of it was real because we could actually see the chocolate being poured into a mould and wrapped up. We also went to the chocolate shop where we took pictures with the largest Hershey bar that felt like 5 pounds and the largest kiss that felt like 10 pounds. I don't know who would eat that much chocolate!!! They had shelves up the ceiling loaded with chocolate! I really liked Chocolate World.

Rideau Hall

We went to Rideau Hall. It was the house of the governor general. There were a lot of trees. Each of the trees was planted by someone famous like Mikhail Gorbachev, John F. Kennedy, or some other Duke of something. There were a lot of mosquitoes so we had to leave before we even saw the hall. But, in between the trees and on the paths, there were cool things like a totem pole and an Inukshuk. The totem pole was given to the people at Rideau Hall by the Kwakwaka'wakw tribe because the governor general at that time was named Chief of that tribe. The inushuk was made for the second anual Aboriginal day. An inushuk is supposed to warn people about dangers in the arctic.

Mint

We went to the Royal Canadian Mint. It was in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It was supposed to look like a castle on the outside and had a tall fence and thick gates. We didn't take pictures because pictures were not allowed. We had to wait in a white tent for our tour guide to come because they were doing construction on part of the facade. When we were waiting for our tour guide to come, we saw wooden cutouts of dollar coins (Canadian dollars mind you) with the Vancouver winter Olympic mascots Sumi and Miga. Their faces were cut out so you had to stick your own face in. When the tour guide arrived, he took us inside and the tour began. There were two mints in Canada. One in Winnipeg and one in Ottawa. This one made collector coins, investment coins, and medals. The one in Winnipeg made real circulating money. The workers first took a block of gold and put it in a machine the flattened it with 8 tons of pressure and made it into a coil. They then sent the coil to another room and and made the coil thinner. Then, they flattened it out and punched gold coins out of it. They then cleaned it in a solution and tumbled it around with beads and stuff to make it shiny. They then pressed designs on to it. For investment coins, they mechanically pressed it because they were just investment coins but for collector coins, they hand pressed it. For the investment coins, one person took a bunch of blanks, blew the dust off, and another loaded them in a machine that pressed the designs on to them. All the time, they were wearing rubber gloves so they wouldn't make fingerprints on the coins. For the collector coins, however, only one person worked the machine. He had a magnifying glass to look carefully at the coins and those which were not good had to go into a furnace and back through the process again. Those that were good, he put them one by one into a press and pressed each one eight times with 12 tons of pressure. Then, all the coins were put in boxes and shipped away. We went to the store and there was a 28 kilogram gold bar that they had chained to a table and you could try to lift it. It was so heavy! We bought two collector coins and left.