Today we drive to Baddeck (pronounced BA-Deck). We arrived early so headed out to the Alexander Graham Bell Historic Site. The grounds were beautiful. Across the street there were a few people playing bagpipes wandering around. People were tossing frisbees and flying kites. It was a gorgeous day.
We took a tour called “the Measure of a Man”. We learned a lot about Bell. He was homeschooled through age 10 and then tried public school but didn’t do well. He was an accomplished pianist and found a great passion working with the deaf. He was very interested in sound. His parents thought he would never amount to anything. His two brothers died at a young age and his parents moved thinking that would make him healthier (he was showing sickness signs as well).
He invented the first telephone. He was friends with Thomas Edison and purchased the patten for the photograph from him, improved it and then sold it back for $200,000. He used that money to open a school for the deaf. We learned about finger spelling and his unique phonetic language based on tongue and breathe.
He went on to have an obsession with tetrahedrons and created some very unique flying machines like the Cygnet, Silver Bullet and the hydrofoil.
We did out XPlorers book and earned our dog tags.
His simple structure that made his kites and the Cygnet fly.
We had to design our own kites.
Then we borrowed kites from the center and went outside to fly them. I picked the largest kite there was telling Mom the more surface area the better it will fly.
I was right! Well, that an some really great winds for kite flying.
Can you see my kite up there? It is at the end of the string! I ran out of string! Mom helped real it in later and it took her a good 20 minutes of hard work to get it down.
We came home and went swimming in the heated pool at the campground.
Oh, yesterday Mom was doing laundry and was reading a newspaper laying around. She was laughing that one of the major cities they report on is Clearwater!
