Buster Travels

Hi, it's your pal Buster again. Behind me is the famous Mackinac Bridge, also called the "Mighty Mac."

The Mackinac Bridge connects the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan, right where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet. On the north side of the bridge is St. Ignace on the Upper Peninsula, and on the south end is Mackinaw City.

At 8,614 feet, the Mackinac Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere (North and South America). That's one and two-thirds of a mile! When it was completed in 1957, the Mackinac Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world, but longer ones have been built in other parts of the world since then.

Its towers are 552 feet tall above the water, and 3,800 feet apart. At its maximum rise, the bottom of the bridge is around 200 feet above the water, high enough to allow large container ships to pass underneath.

A suspension bridge is a bridge with overhead cables supported by towers, with a roadway suspended (or hanging) underneath. The curved cable and the suspension cables are in tension (tension is pulling force) and the towers are in compression (pushing force). This combination of forces holds the roadway up. (See the drawing I have attached.)

Suspension bridges can cross longer distances than any other bridge type.

Some early suspension bridges had trouble with stability. (Watch a video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, if you don't believe me!) But the design of the Mackinac Bridge avoids these problems because of the truss supporting the roadbed, which you can see in my fourth photo.

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Hi, it's your pal, Buster. You may remember that last year my humans and I visited the Alton Bay Seaplane Base and Ice Runway in Alton Bay, New Hampshire.

This year we returned on a sunny Thursday in February. It was cold but really quite pleasant, if you could stay out of the wind. It was a busy day on the runway - we saw several take offs and landings. I'm attaching a couple of videos so you can see what we saw!

Alton Bay Ice Runway and Seaplane Base (B18) [https://www.facebook.com/AltonBaySeaplaneBaseandIceRunway] is an ice runway in the winter, when weather permits, and a base for seaplanes during the summer. It is the only officially recognized ice runway in the US outside of Alaska.

The ice runway is a plowed rectangle that is 100 feet wide by 2,600 feet long. It has a taxi lane and a runway.

Ice needs to be rather thick before you can land on it, which is why they can't always open the ice runway every winter.

The weird thing is that we could see ice fishing cabins on the lake, just beyond the runway. I wonder what the fish think of all this!

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Hi again from Buster! This is Charlotte, a green sea turtle living at the Mystic Aquarium. Charlotte is actually male, in spite of his name - he was named before they figured out his gender.

Charlotte was injured by a boat, which caused him to have what is called "bubble butt". Air is trapped in the back of his shell, which causes his rear end to float and makes it difficult for him to dive.

In spite of his injuries, Charlotte lives a good life at the aquarium. He is a favorite for visitors. There is even a book that was inspired by his life! ("Bubble Butt! The Challenged Sea Turtle of the Mystic Aquarium")

Green sea turtles normally live in warm tropical waters. They eat sea grasses and algae. In spite of their name, green sea turtles are not typically green but usually have a brown shell. They are called "green" because the fat inside their bodies is colored green, probably because of what they eat.

The Mystic Aquarium’s sea turtle rehabilitation program takes in around 20 to 30 rescued sea turtles a year. Most are released once they are well, but sometimes a turtle like Charlotte cannot return to the sea.

Good news! Although green sea turtles were considered endangered, they were recently taken off of the endangered list because their population has been increasing in recent years.

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Hi, Buster Rabbit here, this time at Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut. I'm having fun watching the beluga whales as they swim by in their outdoor habitat.

Beluga whales are white whales with conical (means "like a cone") teeth that live in cold Arctic waters. They can be found near Alaska, Canada, Norway, Greenland and Russia. They eat fish, squid, octopus, shrimp and crabs, which they swallow whole. (Their teeth are good at grabbing things but are no good for chewing.) They are around 12 to 15 feet long.

Beluga whales have a "melon" shaped dome on their heads that they can use to help make different sounds. They are sometimes called the canaries of the sea because of all the different whistles and chirping sounds they can make. We heard them whistling and talking when the trainers were feeding them.

Did you know? Baby beluga whales are usually grey, not white. Scientists think this may help them keep warm - because darker colors absorb more sunlight - and make them harder for predators to see. As the babies get older, they shed the grey skin cells and become white like their parents.

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