Alexander Graham Bell Museum and Baddeck to Moncton NB

Trip Odometer: 419 km

We went to he Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck before we left today. It was really interesting. I (Anna-Lee) liked learning that he did a lot of work with the deaf. His Mom had gone almost deaf and his wife Mabel was deaf. 

I liked using the old phone - it was very heavy and hard to dial!

Dave had to teach Anna-Lee how to use the rotary dial.

Bell worked a lot with the other senses like touch and vocals in his work with the deaf, so there were lots of activities to do using touch like an alphabet you could touch out on someone's hand, and feeling in a box to see if you could figure out what was in the box by touch.
 

The touch box. Anna-Lee was given a booklet of activities to do at the museum. For each activity there were questions to answer or comparisons to make etc.

The museum also had lots of stuff he'd invented. Mom gave us a game to go look for something behind the glass that made us wonder "What on earth is that???" Then we had to guess what it was and see how close we came to what it really was.  That was a lot of fun.
 

This was Anna-Lee's object that caused her to ask "What on earth is that???" Any guesses? It is a child's toy. Bell used wind propulsion to cause toy soldiers to move.

The airplane he made was pretty neat. The pilot (not him), sat on something like a bicycle seat! It was all pretty interesting and I now want to go to the Aviation Museum when I get back home.
 

The intriguing seat for the pilot!

I always like to look into rooms. They had Bell's study set up in the museum. They said his wife gave him a painting of a night owl because he would stay up late at night working! He kept it in his study. They also said he'd get so excited when something worked he's dance a jig whirling around the room, then go  back to bed.
 

Bell's study.

We had a couple stops on the way to Moncton and one of them was in Oxford. I don't remember if it was Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, but it is the blueberry capital of Canada! We saw people stopped all along the highway picking wild blueberries! We stopped at a blueberry booth and got some yummy wild blueberries.
 

Yes, we stopped and turned around to get this photo! Who knows when we'll ever be back to the Oxford/Pugwash turnoff! (Nova Scotia by the way).

I (Monica) really enjoyed the museum too. I liked the time line about Bell and the things he did. They also had two really good videos - one of his work on the Silver Dart airplane, and the other on his work on the hydrofoil. They had life sized replicas of both. 
 

The Silver Dart.

Now this looked fun to take a ride on. Bell and his partner (Baldwin) invented the hydrofoil and also had the fastest hydrofoil on record traveling up to 113 km/hr in 1919. I bet that was a lot of fun for the person driving it. Bell never got to ride it. He just had the imagination and ideas.

It was really interesting learning about his wife Mabel. She was very supportive of her husband and was the one to initiate the Aviation Association he had with a few other men he worked with.

I also enjoyed trying to fly a kite. Kites were a big part of what Bell did in his research of aviation. Anna-Lee and I and even Mom attempted it. 

It was not easy to do!

Monica and Anna-Lee trying together.

Dad to the rescue. Bras d'Or Lake in background.

The game we played about finding something that we wondered what it was.... Mom chose something and I knew what it was!!! I knew because they used it in the movie "My Fair Lady!" Mom thought that was pretty impressive.

This is what Mom chose and Monica had seen in the movie. A flame would move to different shapes depending on the vocal sound made. That would show up as different patterns on the revolving mirror. He used it for deaf students to show them patterns of sound. It is called a manometric capsule -Monica did not know that part!

We couldn't stop to get a better photo of this one. This is the Canso Causeway connecting Cape Breton to mainland Nova Scotia. Bye NS.

I really like where we are staying in Moncton. It is very wheelchair accessible and I like being back near the Bay of Fundy.