Ok so I wasn’t too lazy, and  I did do the cool thing I had planned on doing, which was go to the Biodome!  This place is an environmental museum with four distinct ecosystems:  a tropical rainforest, a Laurentian forest, a St. Lawrence marine ecosystem, and an arctic/antarctic ecosystem.  It is all inside this big dome building next to the Parc Olympique, and was previously used for Olympic cycling events.  Annette accompanied me again, and was extremely patient as I took in every single detail.  I warned her that I would probably take forever, and it was no joke – I think we were there for like 4 hours.

Here’s what we saw.  First was the tropical rainforest, and the creatures that stood out the most there were definitely the vast herds of screaming school children.  In addition to them, we saw this super cool spoonbill bird, which was hanging out with a capybara.  I had never heard of a capybara before, and it turns out they are the world’s largest rodent.  And yet somehow I still really liked him.  He was swimming back and forth, back and forth, so I wasn’t able to get a very good photo of him, bummer.  But check out these piranhas, eh?  There were lots and lots of birds (Rick and Jack, I’ll send you more pics later!) including some ducks and a scarlet ibis, some little black monkeys, some little orange monkeys, iguanas, caimans, bats, poison dart frogs, an anaconda, and more!  We couldn’t find the two-toed sloth though. 

Then it was on to the Laurentian forest, where there were a couple of river otters swimming and playing, a beaver dam that they had a camera inside of so you could see the little guy sleeping in there, more birds and ducks, two Canadian lynx, and a bunch of fish.  They also had some cool endangered plant projects going on, wild leeks and ginseng among them.  This photo is a couple of porcupines sleeping in a tree!  (PS, you weren’t supposed to use a flash, so that’s why a lot of these photos are sub-prime, sorry.)

The St. lawrence marine ecosystem had an aquarium part with lots of cool fish – did you know that flounder and halibut start out like other fish, and then as they get older they turn sideways and their one eye migrates around?  They end up flattened so they can lie on the bottom all camouflaged and have both their eyes looking up, and so they swim sideways.  Weird.  Annette and I were both deeply disturbed at the realization that Flounder from Little Mermaid was apparently not a flounder at all. 

Then you could go upstairs and see the above water part of this ecosystem, with all kinds of sea birds and a tidal pool.  The tidal pool was crazy and kind of creepy, all sorts of multi-colored gelatinous-looking things.  And get this.  A woman in New England won a giant lobster (8 kg – it’s claws were as big as my forearms!) at a bar in some kind of Super Bowl drawing this past February.  She couldn’t bear the thought of eating it, so she found it a home at the Biodome!  The birds in this part were really beautiful – common eiders, black guillemots, terns, and black-legged kittiwakes (yes, I did write those down so I could tell you Rick).

And last but not least, the arctic/antarctic.  Here you go Mom: penguins, penguins, penguins! It was interesting to read about how birds in the north and south poles share so many characteristics and yet are unrelated, because they evolved in similar environments.  For example, puffins and penguins have similar coloring, because when they are swimming, the black on their backs camouflages them from predators in the air and the white on their tummies camouflages them from predators below them in the water.  Cool stuff.  There were 4 kinds of penguins: gentoons, rockhoppers, macaronis, and king or emperors. They were wildly entertaining, and I could have sat there all day and watched them!  They also had a speaker broadcasting the noises of the penguins, and those crazy guys with the yellow tufts sure were a noisy bunch! 

Ok, enough about the Biodome already.   Nate and Brent had managed to get Annette and I in to their evening reception, which was held at the Museum of Fine Arts.  So we went, we schmoozed, we drank wine and ate lots of cheese.  Nate was still determined to go to his #1 brewpub of choice, but was convinced that it was too far away.  So we went to Brutopia, even though he had already been there for lunch that day.  I think the following photos sum up that experience nicely. 

As soon as Nate is done for the day today we are going to make yet another attempt to get to his #1 brewpub of choice, and hopefully we’ll beat the hockey game rush.  And tomorrow we say "Au revoir Canada!" and begin the long haul home!

And oh yeah – GO WILD!!!!!
  

Yeah, so no posting yesterday.  Wasn’t feeling it.  Here’s a re-cap though: we drove, and drove, and drove… we arrived in Montreal at rush hour, which was stressful, we had to navigate through crowds of people to get to one of Nate’s bars of choice, which was also stressful.  I was feeling overwhelmed by being in a city after days of small towns or no towns, so I went back to our room to chill and do some work while Nate went to a reception for his conference, and then out for a drink afterwards, where Nate’s boss Robin’s purse got stolen.  Maaaaajor bummer.  I watched the Senators-Penguins hockey game and saw a guy take a puck to the face.  Grody. 

This morning Nate went off to his conference and I went to the hotel gym.  The elliptical machines were in use by a couple of fem-bots (seriously, I thought they were going to blow a fuse and start on fire!), so I ran on the treadmill for awhile in an attempt to undo the damage of brewpub day.  Then I met Annette, Nate’s co-worker Brent’s wife, and the boys and a bunch of their little museum friends, and went for lunch.  Check out the plate of deliciousness in front of Nate!  That, my friends, is poutine – french fries, sauce, and cheese.  Mmmmm.

Then the boys went back to their conference, and Annette and I wandered around the Gare Central for awhile, looking at all the yummy restaurants, the bakery, the Belgian chocolate place, and this amazing flower shop.  The we decided to go to Mont Royal.  We took the metro, then got on 2 wrong buses before figuring out the right one and heading to the top of "the mountain".  When we got there, it was a bit of a let down.  There were a bunch of young guys blasting loud music, drinking beer, and yelling stuff at people, which, you know, kind of makes it less pleasant. So we took a couple of photos, and then caught the same bus as it was coming down the mountain!  The highlight of that whole experience was meeting this guy, who had a Dirtsurfer!  It was kind of like a snowboard with mountain bike wheels.  He rides the bus to the top of the hill and rides his Dirtsurfer down.  Whoa. It looked pretty fun, even though I’m so not into that whole adrenaline sport thing. 

We took the metro back, and somehow went out the wrong exit of our station, and found ourselves in the midst of a huge hockey rally!  Tonight was the first playoff game for the Montreal Canadiens and ooh doggy was the town on fire! 

I met Nate after his conference stuff, and a whole mess of people wanted to join him to go to his #1 brewpub of choice.  So we piled into a bunch of cabs and went there, only to find that it was waaaay too packed for us to even get in the door.  Nate was kind of the leader of the pack at that point so everyone was kind of looking for him to make a decision.  So we decided to walk to the nearest metro stop and go to the next brewpub on his list.  But we got to the metro stop and the ticket buying machine was broken and there was nobody working.  So we walked some more to another stop and finally made it happen.  We ended up at a great little pub, had some dinner, some delicious beer, and got to watch the Canadiens win their first playoff game!

And so, all’s well that ends well.  I have big plans for tomorrow, but I’m not going to give you even a hint, in case I decide to be lazy instead!

That’s pretty much all we did today.  The day got off to an exciting start when we came upon this free outdoor scrap iron sculpture garden, Lakenenland Sculpture Park, just outside of Marquette! 

We drove along the eastern end of the south shore of Lake Superior which provided some beautiful scenery, and we saw another bald eagle sitting on the top of a tree, some cranes (sandhills?) hanging out in the middle of the freaking median, and lots and lots of sleeping deer on the side of the road… er something. 

We took a little side jaunt to Munising Falls in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  We had to dodge a disturbing amount of dog poo, but the waterfall was beautiful! 

We went through the town of Christmas, but did not see Santa, and we went through the supposed moose capital of Michigan, and saw no moose!  Things were starting to get a bit boring.  Then we crossed into Canada.  Even more boring.  And weirdly easy.  And then we drove, and drove, and drove…  Highlights since entering Canada include Nate and I doing an amazing "Fairytale of New York" duet, and watching "Survivorman" on Canadian cable. 

So here we are, post-massages, post- wine and cheese plate, feeling fine, fine, fine.  My massage was good, I mean I think she did a good job and all, but I had been working for like 2 or 3 hours right before it, so all I could think about the whole time was work stuff.  I totally couldn’t let it go no matter how hard I tried and couldn’t really relax, which has basically been my life for the past few weeks, so afterwards I just felt kind of sad and frustrated.  I know, boo freaking hoo.  Poor me and my sucky wine and cheese and massage filled day.  

Ok so anyway.  We missed the early ferry to Madeline Island because it was around the same time as breakfast here at the World’s Greatest Inn, and because of our serious need to catch up on the sleep we haven’t gotten for the past couple of months, and because of the aforementioned most comfortable bed we’ve ever experienced.  If we had taken the next ferry we wouldn’t have gotten back in time for our massages, so we opted instead for a nice, relaxing day in Bayfield. 

There were some shops and a restaurant/coffee shop I had found on travelgreenwisconsin.com, so we started off by getting some coffee and a scone at Burt & Francie’s and checking out the connected store, Inspire.  It turns out that Inspire carries a whole bunch of Global Mamas clothes, this awesome company we learned about while visiting my brother Steve in Ghana.  They are a fair trade organization, providing living wages and business development assistance to women in Ghana.  The owner told us that they are the biggest buyer of Global Mamas products in all of the US!  The tag on each garment tells you who made that specific piece, and he also told us that you can go to the company’s website and see photos, read the story and send an email to that woman.  Whoa.  What a great way to make you think about how the thing you bought actually came to be. 

Then we (and by we I mean I) went to check out some jewelry at a store called Water Music Jewelry and Art, which sells jewelry from local and regional artists, as well as their own handmade pieces.  These two ladies who were also staying at Pinehurst and who we met at breakfast this morning had participated in this arts & crafts workshop thingy this weekend, and their jewelry-making session was taught by the owner of this store.  Then it was back to Burt & Francie’s for a delicious lunch and some Farkel, our new favorite game.  We made sure to tell all of the people working at these stores that we found them through travelgreenwisconsin.com, because as Rick pointed out when we were eating lunch at a little diner in some little town in northern Minnesota where we went to see great grey owls a few years ago, if businesses know what brought their customers to them, they will hopefully care more about those things. 

We then headed back to the inn, where I did some work and Nate read by the fire.  We were also given a great tour by one of the owners, Steve. In the garage he showed us their biodiesel production system, and explained how the solar panels on the roof heat it with radiant heat in the floors.  Another huge set of solar panels heat all the water for the Garden House, the newer sustainably built building that houses a few guest rooms, a common room, and the massage room.  The wastewater from this building goes to an aerobic treatment tank, which saved them from having to install another septic tank, and leaves the water clean enough that it can go right into their drain field, which they didn’t have to expand.  Inside, they used sustainably harvested oak, no or low VOC paint, and had a high efficiency boiler, among many, many other things.  Nate then went to get his massage, and Steve and I headed outside, where we watched rain and snowmelt running off the roof of the building into a water garden featuring native water plants, ooh, me likey.  Drain tiles underground take water to another garden, and then off to another part of the yard, preventing all that water from just running off down the sidewalk into the street, and carrying all sorts of crap with it into our beautiful wonder of the world, Lake Superior.  Oooooh, me really likey!  Now he was really speaking my language.  Steve pointed out some of the other gardens around the grounds, all featuring native plants.  One garden was apparently planted 70 or 80 years ago.  When he and his wife Nancy bought the place it was overrun with weeds, so they dug up all the good things they wanted to keep, tilled the heck out of it, and replanted them, and it has been golden ever since. 

Tomorrow we leave this amazing little slice of heaven and head to the U.P. der hey.  Visits to several brewpubs will hopefully help dull the shock that will surely hit us when we arrive at tomorrow night’s lodging, a freaking Travelodge.