K+P Take Buffalo Day 2

The night before felt like a dream! A dream filled with dancing, screams of excitement, and a lot of amazing drag.

Neither Paula nor myself had planned anything for our second day in Buffalo, but we were in no rush to get home. Our only goal for getting home, was to beat Toronto rush hour traffic - which we did, even though Toronto traffic is ALWAYS awful.

We decided that we would each get to choose an activity for Buffalo Day 2! Since we were in the United States, I wanted to eat at a fast food restaurant that isn't in Canada. (I love food!) I chose Sonic and yes, we had it for breakfast. In our minds, driving 15 minutes across Buffalo sounded like an immense journey, but it was quite easy. We found the Sonic and both had burgers and milkshakes for breakfast - breakfast of champions!

The employee at the counter was hilarious! She told us all about coming into work 2 hours late the previous day because she was hungover, just to realize that the restaurant didn't have any power and wasn't open. She went on to have a full conversation with Paula and I - we felt like friends afterwards. While we were finishing up our "breakfast", she even came over to us to collect our trash. Like I said in my "Day 1" post, we met some amazing and hilarious people in Buffalo. She was quite the character and sharing our first time Sonic experience with her was a highlight of the trip! By the way, the Sonic milkshakes were ah-mazing!

Afterwards, we headed to Paula's activity which was the Buffalo's Museum of Science. Honestly, I didn't really want to go to the Museum, but I am so happy that I did because we had a great time! The trip to get to the museum was a little more ... difficult ... than expected. The GPS lead us straight through Buffalo instead of using the highways to go around the main city. The streets were very uneven and narrow and the Buffalo citizens had places that they needed to be in a hurry at 10:30 p.m. on a Thursday. It was not the most fun drive, but we made it to the museum safely!

(There won't be many pictures of us in the museum since we were having too much fun!)

The museum was quite interactive and had sections about biodiversity for Paula and an area about health sciences for me! It was also a great time to go because the museum wasn't very full since it was a Thursday morning. There were a couple of young families, but, for the most part, Paula and I had the whole museum to ourselves.

We started off looking at the displays on the main floor. I took a moment to be a true Canadian tourist and look a picture with a displayed moose. I also took a moment to appreciate being in Buffalo by taking a picture with "Stuffy". "Stuffy" is a buffalo skin on a wire frame. Apparently, the skin has been preserved so many times with so many chemicals, that it is not safe to touch. It was fascinating - although maybe not safe to stand too close and breathe in whatever chemicals they had been using for all those years!

We then headed upstairs. We started in the biodiversity room that had a ton of animal displays. It was kind of creepy to me to be surrounded by a bunch of taxidermy animals, but Paula found it incredibly interesting. We spend a bit of time in the room reading all of the information before being scared off by the Polar Bear and Alaskan Grizzly Bear...they were HUGE and looked hungry!

Next, we went into the artifact room. A lot of the information for the displays were on digital i-pad systems scattered around the room, so it was hard to really take in the information. I would have preferred the old school plaque methods because I don't think Paula and I got to truly learn about everything that was in that room because we didn't want to "hog" the i-pad.

We moved on. We went into the Dino room, which was small, but always interesting. I think that most of their dinosaur bones are re-creations because, unlike the Toronto ROM that tells you which single bone in the dinosaur display is real, this museum didn't have that. None of the bones on display looked to be real anyways, but it was still interesting to see and interesting to see some of the smaller - mostly sea life - fossils.

The next room was my favourite room - the Health Sciences room. This room was filled with a bunch of interactive activities. Paula and I started off with taking a test to see if we were at risk for common health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease - which sounds boring, but to someone that works in my profession, is right up my alley! Next, we challenged each other to a health trivia game. Paula did surprisingly well and only got one answer wrong! I then headed over to a fascinating display of a human body portrayed as a working factory. It had so many realistic aspects that health-care-Kaylin absolutely loved! It was cool to witness how our bodies truly work like machines every day to keep us functioning (and alive).

There were still 3 more interactive activities in this room and Paula and I wanted to try them all! We started with a "surgery" activity that included us using two mechanical arms to weave a shoelace through an obstacle course. It was hard! Secondly, and probably my favourite activity we did that day, was a racing game where you and a partner would stand on opposing sides of a table and race to hit as many buttons that lit up before the clock ran out. It was quite the workout and the workout was intensified by our laughter. I beat Paula the first time and she beat me the second time. Once we finished each round, we would run over to the entrance of the room that displayed a light up heart. On one side of the display wall, there was a metal bar that you could grasp and it would automatically amplify your heartbeat for the room to hear; as well, the heart in the display wall would light up according to your heartbeat. Again, this may all sound super boring to whoever is reading this, but I was having the best time!

Once Paula and I finished the main floor, we headed upstairs to the second floor. This is where the rooms started blending together for me. I recall their being a bug room - which I was definitely not about - so...many...butterflies. As well, there was a nutrition room that Paula and I planned on just walking straight through, but as we were walking through the room, an announcer stated "Ready? GO!" We had somehow activated an interactive game that involved us running in front of a screen and using our shadows to keep falling fruit from touching the ground. All we could do was laugh because we had no idea how we had been sucked into the game.

The final room on the second floor involved a lot of machine related activities. Paula and I moved boxes with a crane, raced cars down a ramp, and tried to stop a river by building custom dams. We also got to experience tornado-like winds when we stood in a wind simulation booth. Winds at that level hurt the eardrums, as we discovered, so I don't recommend it.

At this point, we knew that we would have to leave soon, so we headed upstairs to the third floor. The third floor room was all about space. It seemed to be the area that classes/school trips would go because there were a few activities that were missing parts and instructions. Other than that, there were few things to do on this floor. The most interesting, although disappointing, was an area that you could smell what each planet smelled like. Not sure how it was supposed to work, but, for most planets, Paula nor I were able to smell a difference.

The FINAL area of the museum was up a couple more stairs to their Observatory Deck. Unfortunately, it was closed due to the season and the rainy day, but we were still able to enjoy the view. We could see over the main Buffalo area and it was beautiful.

Now, it was time to head home. The GPS was NOT helpful in this regards because it was trying to get us onto the highway, but the turn was so non-specific that we missed it and ended up having to drive straight through - what we could only assume - was downtown Buffalo. It was similar to driving in Downtown Toronto, so you can imagine our state of minds at this point in the trip. We were desperate to get back to Ontario and into more familiar territory. Getting back to the Peace Bridge crossing was a tad "hairy" and at one point we ended up in a park (my fault), but we were finally able to sigh with relief when we arrived at the border crossing. The border patrol thought it was unusual that we were claiming nothing upon our return into Canada, but - as you've read - we did zero shopping while in the USA. Oh well, we paid the $5.00 toll - which was a surprise - and crossed back into Canada. Yay!

As much as we enjoyed our time in Buffalo, Paula and I were happy to be driving in Ontario. Today was fun, but that last leg of the trip was stressful. Even though the highway was busy, it was all familiar to us and we didn't really need directions to get home, so we were finally able to enjoy the music playlist I had created for our trip. I'm so happy that I was able to go on this somewhat spontaneous mid-week trip and have an absolute blast with my best friend! Thanks for coming with me Paula!