Roamy in Canada!!!

See that red dot? That's where Roamy is right now, safe with me:-) , Pea of Peas Corner.

Roamy the Roaming Gnome has been here for a couple of weeks now and the poor lad has had to wait for me to get better before I could bring him out sightseeing! I don't think he minded waiting, though, since he made friends with Tinkerbell and spent his time with her:-) I think she was giving him some attitude in this picture! lol

Finally it was time to go do some sightseeing. I had told him about our Science North and he said that was the first place he wanted to see. He was all excited when he saw we were getting close to it:-)

Science North is an interactive science museum here in Sudbury. The complex, which is Northern Ontario's most popular tourist attraction, consists of two snowflake-shaped buildings on the southwestern shore of Lake Ramsey.

In this picture I was showing Roamy the part of Science North that is the restaurant...on the right hand side.

We then made our way to the Big Nickel. Roamy told me he'd love to bring a Canadian nickel home with him but I told him this nickel was a bit TOO big to fit in his pocket! hehe His eyes got huge when he saw the size of it!!

The Big Nickel is a nine-metre (30 ft) replica of a 1951 Canadian nickel, located at the grounds of Dynamic Earth in Sudbury, Ontario. It is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest coin.

Roamy was quite in awe of the Inco Superstack as well!

The Inco Superstack in Sudbury Ontario, with a height of 380 meters (1,247 ft), is the tallest chimney in Canada and the Western hemisphere, and the second tallest freestanding chimney in the world after the Power Station in Kazakhstan. It is also the second tallest freestanding structure of any type in Canada, ranking behind the CN Tower but ahead of First Canadian Place, and the 27th tallest freestanding structure in the world. The Superstack sits atop the largest nickel smelting operation in the world at Inco's Copper Cliff processing facility in the city of Greater Sudbury. It was constructed in 1972 at an estimated cost of 25 million dollars.

On our way to another tourist attraction, we came upon an Inukshuk that someone had built on top of a rock outcropping. Roamy didn't realize what a climb we'd have to get to it but I didn't have the heart to say no to him:-) What does this represent, he wanted to know? The mysterious stone figures known as inuksuit can be found throughout the circumpolar world. Inukshuk, the singular of inuksuit, means "in the likeness of a human" in the Inuit language. They are monuments made of unworked stones that are used by the Inuit for communication and survival. The traditional meaning of the inukshuk is "Someone was here" or "You are on the right path."

Our next stop was to visit the Miner's Monument. I told Roamy how much this monument means to me because my father worked underground in the nickel mine for over 30 years!

This sculpture(15 ft high/4.7 metres) symbolizes workers extracting mineral resources to build their community.

Roamy said he would have liked to have been a miner as well but as I told him it's hard and dirty work! Can you see him in this picture? :-)

Before heading home we stopped in at Canadian Tire, a store that sells everything from car parts to kitchen appliances:-) He helped me pick out a new white stove fan...what a great helper!

They also have a garden center so we went in and ummmm....errrrrr....there kind of was an accident with one of our black bears....

Noooooo, it wasn't Roamy, it was another gnome who got smooshed. I think he knew him, though, because I could hear him saying "Hey, Ralph, can you hear me?".....I don't think Roamy liked it very much in that store! hehe

Roamy is going to go visit Dianne in PA next but before I send him out to her, he's coming to Niagara Falls with me this weekend:-) I'll make another post with the pictures I take of him at the Falls on Tuesday! Hugs xoxo