Biosphere (Montreal)

April 26, 2009

Afternoon

The rose garden is probably prettier in the summer.

Christopher was quite delighted with his geocache trade - a little blue truck.

Georallye station 6 - Samantha discovered this butterfly near the topographic map station.

We climbed a big hill to find a geocache and came across this tower.

We crossed this bridge... when we got to it. ;-)

Georallye - station 5 - Fossil Station - Samantha checks out some of the fossils.

The fossils in the limestone blocks on Saint Helen's Island military buildings are the remains of marine creatures that lived in a warm, shallow sea. approximately 500 milion years ago, Quebec was located near the equator and was covered by an ocean that was the precursor to today's Atlantic ocean. You can see the remains of brachiopods (shell), bryozoans and crinoids in the wall.

Georallye - station 6 - Groundwater station -
Samantha enjoyed the turtle container for this one.

Georallye - station 7 - The emerald ash borer.
We were more impressed by the damage done to the wall and light fixture nearby!

Having almost completed the georallye,
Samantha and Christopher enjoyed some time at the playground.

Turtle, turtle, rah, rah, rah!

Yay, a chance to climb
(with some guidance from poppa, Samantha eventually made it all the way over the net)

The kids had a blast in these spinning cups.

Christopher on the slide.

Finally Samantha got her wish to go up the elevator to the top of the tower in the biosphere.

This was bucky's underwater turbine invention. There were lots of bucky's inventions on display although we never did figure out who this bucky guy was.

We were amazed to see a photo of what the site looked like during Expo 67...
so much of what was built has fallen into disrepair or has disappeared entirely!

Georallye - station 8 - The final station included a tricky hide...
you had to figure out that the top of the pop can could actually unscrew! Then the 3D cartographic simulation on the computer showed how the biosphere site would be submerged if the river water level rose 17m.