As I was driving I noticed a Ruffed Grouse on the side of the road. And then I saw another and then another. It was a mother Grouse with her family of baby Grouse. She must have had at least six to eight babies with her.
It rained during the night. Despite the fact that I was using my mother's tent that was mostly all screen walls with a fly on top, I was happy to find that I remained dry and warm the whole time. It was quite comfortable actually. Unfortunately, my dining tent did not fare as well. I hadn't bothered to peg it down and the wind had tossed it around and one of the legs was broken. I was able to prop it up for the rest of the time we were there, but upon folding it up to put away, the leg tore off of it completely and it is now beyond repair. So, I will just save the screens as back up screens and buy a new one next year I guess. I had breakfast and then headed down to the beach to see if I could find the sandpiper that was mentioned the previous day at the Discovery Program. It was not at the beach and I even tried the dock at the boat launch but it wasn't there either. I did, however, see the family of loons that we had been hearing over the past couple of days. Since the sandpiper wasn't at the beach I decided to drive down to the other beach to see if maybe it was there or to see if there was anything else of interest there. As I was driving I noticed a Ruffed Grouse on the side of the road. And then I saw another and then another. It was a mother Grouse with her family of baby Grouse. She must have had at least six to eight babies with her. And they were attempting to cross the road. So, I stopped the car and waited. The mother sat in the middle of the road calling to her young and watching them cross one by one. However, the little ones were taking their sweet time crossing so this was a bit of a slow process. As I sat there waiting another car came up behind me and slowed down and stopped. The gentleman got out of the car to see what was going on. I pointed out that the momma was in the middle of the road and was refusing to move until all her babies were across and that they were not wanting to come when they were called. He chuckled and got back in his car and we both waited until we were slowly able to pass the Grouse family and continue on. The Day Use beach that I was headed to, also doubles as a dog beach. The Day Use beach is a nice, sandy beach with a nice view. However, just like the other beach, it was flooded too. It was flooded enough to make frogs feel right at home. Here too the Water Smartweed was growing in pretty, pink, bunches. All the pretty flowers floating in the water but no sandpiper to be seen. I took a walk around the area and discovered the park office. The laundry room is located in the bottom half of this building. The covered picnic pavilion is also in the area. I also took a quick look at the baseball diamond. It is one of the better baseball diamonds I have seen in a park. Most of the parks I have seen lately have let their baseball diamonds get over grown and are pretty much abandoned. But this one was in great condition and even had picnic tables around the perimeter so that people can sit and watch the game. I returned to the campsite and asked my mom if she wanted to hike the Recreation Trail with me. She thought that was a good idea. So, once again we left dad to read his book and off we went to hike a trail. The Recreation Trail starts at the road and circles around back to the road again. It runs all through the woods and does not go around or near any body of water at all. This trail has fewer pines than the Lonesome Bog trail did and so everything was much greener here. The Alder Trees had nuts that looked like little, tiny, green, pine cones hanging from the branches. The ground plants were different here too. Interrupted Clubmoss lined the edges of the path in some places. There were poisonous mushrooms. And there were edible raspberries. A Dot-tailed Whiteface Dragonfly landed to say hello. The Recreation Trail is a fairly short trail and, despite taking our time, we were at the end of it in no time. We were still in the mood to hike so we decided to do a second trail. The Prospector's Trail which starts down by the Day Use beach. As we approached the trail head, we looked across the lake and noticed a tee-pee structure just barely visible among the vegetation. There was also a dock to the far right. Looking at a map later on, we found out that there is a small parcel of land that belongs to the First Nations on the other side of the lake, as well as a Ranger Camp of some sort. The general public is not permitted over there. The Prospector's Trail begins right beside the Fish Cleaning Station. So when we saw this blue and red contraption near by we wondered if it had something to do with the fish cleaning station. It was strange looking and we didn't know what it was. The trail is more of a road than a trail; at least most of it is. However, access to public vehicles is blocked off. A little ways down the road we came across another strange contraption embedded in cement. Once we saw that we realized that this, as well as the blue and red contraption we had passed, were both parts of drilling machinery. Of course! As if I didn't realize that right away! After all, it is called the "Prospector's Trail". A little further down the trail we saw a yellow mining cart on display. The trail was like a mini outdoor museum but it was lacking any information about any of the displays. The trail runs parallel to the shoreline of the lake and from time to time we could get near the waters edge and see the frogs hiding in the weeds. At one spot there is a big bat box hanging up on a post. I thought it was a great idea, however, it was painted black and it was sitting in the direct sun on a hot day. I suspect that bats might not be too comfortable in such heat, so I imagine it was probably empty. Shortly after the bat box, the trail that used to look like a road turned into a much smaller path through the woods. The birch trees were big and beautiful. One of them jutted out in an "L" shape which I think is somewhat unusual for a birch tree. The wooded part of the trail is rather short and soon we were at the road. The trail is not a loop so in order to get back to the car we had to turn around and go back the way we came. Mom didn't want to walk all the way back because she wanted to stay and explore some places along the side of the road. I wasn't interested in doing that so, I walked back to get the car by myself and told her I would drive over to her and pick her up. On my way back I saw a Two-striped grasshopper laying eggs in the dirt. And I saw a female Blackpoll Warbler watching me from the tree top. I picked up mom in the car and we drove around for awhile and looked at the various campsites at the other end of the park. We were scoping out some potential sites for my parents RV if they wanted to come back next year. As we drove along we started noticing that some of the permit holders has a big "S" written on the permits instead of the usual writing. Turns out the "S" stands for "Seasonal". The Ontario parks have started up a new seasonal camping program where you can put your name in, and if you are chosen, you can pay a seasonal fee to use the campsite for the entire summer. According to the Ontario Parks website, more and more of these parks will be offering the program. Some of the parks have 30 or 40 sites available for seasonal permits. I am not sure how I feel about that. It seems like a whole lot of prime sites being given to people who will not even necessarily be there for the whole time. For example, the site right beside us,( # 67) had a seasonal permit and they had only stayed for the weekend. The other days we were, there was no one on it (which explains why it was so quiet). I think maybe a few sites (10 or 12 at most) is one thing for seasonal sites, but 30 or 40 seasonal sites... seems rather unfair to the rest of us. After all, isn't that what trailer parks are for? At least at Selkirk Park there are only monthly reservations instead of the whole season. I dunno... I think it would be disappointing to want a particular site only to find out that you can't have it for the entire summer because someone has a season pass on it; you know what I mean? After hiking the trails we went back to camp and had lunch. We took a nap and then we played dominoes for awhile. Just before supper I took a stroll down to the beach again to look once more for the sandpiper. And there it was! At least I thought that was what it was. In the end, it turns out that it wasn't a sandpiper after all. There never was a sandpiper here. It was a case of mistaken identity. The sandpiper turned out to be a "Greater Yellowlegs" bird. (Yeah..."Greater Yellowlegs". I don't know who named it but they could have been more creative, don't you think?) It spotted me and began to nervously make it's way across the sand towards the children's playground equipment. When it reached the flooded area behind the jungle gym it joined up with two more Greater Yellowlegs. There was not one, but three of them! And to top it off, there were a couple of mallard ducks there too. I stood very still and watched them all for awhile. Eventually some other people came down to the beach and I knew that the birds probably wouldn't stay much longer once the beach filled up with people so I went back to camp. When I got back to camp I sat at the picnic table and tried to relax but once again, like each of the previous days I had been here, I heard the sound of something chewing on a tree. It was only very faint and I could only hear it when no one was talking. It was driving me crazy not knowing what it was. So I got up and started searching for the source of the sound. The sound led me to a pine tree with a pile of sawdust (also known as frass) at the bottom of it. I looked up as far as I could see but I didn't see any animal or any large holes in the tree. Nor were there any birds. It looked like just a normal, every day tree. The sawdust was mixed with little black things that looked almost like mouse poop only smaller. As far as I can tell it was some sort of wood boring insect causing this. Perhaps a group of carpenter ants or a Pine Engraver bug or something. I guess I will never know for sure. As the sun was setting over the trees, so too was it setting over my camping for the season. We have to go home tomorrow and soon I would be back to work. I was all out of vacation days for the year so I had to be content with keeping all the beautiful things I had seen this year in my memory. I will anxiously await next years camping season and I will spend my winter planning out where I will go to next. There is always another adventure and another provincial park just around the corner.
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For a Sunday morning, the park was much quieter than I am used to in a Provincial Park. There is usually sounds of kids yelling and pots and pans clanking and car doors slamming as people make their breakfasts, But not here. All was peaceful and quiet. It was serene. After eating a hot breakfast on this cloudy and misty morning, I headed down to the beach to see if there any nature photos to be taken. I was hoping for a picture of the loons I had heard last night. Instead I found that the beach was occupied by a children's group doing the discovery program. I watched as the kids excitedly tried to catch frogs under the watchful eye of the camp staff member who was leading the expedition. The beach was a good place to look for frogs, not just because there was the shore line of the lake to look, but also because much of the playground area was flooded. This meant a nice shallow place where frogs like to hang out and, at the same time, the kids could easily wade into the water without fear of drowning. The wet and flooded ground was also home to some pretty plants with flowers. Most notably the pinks of the Water Smartweed and the whites of the Pearly Everlastings. The ground was flooded enough that a trail to a picnic table was no longer accessible unless you were willing to wade out to it. The kids were so involved with catching frogs that the playground equipment was completely abandoned. On the picnic table was a chart of some of the different kinds of reptiles and amphibians in the area. One of the parents and the staff member and I started talking about the different kinds of frogs. When one of the kids brought over what they thought was a tiny frog we determined that it was actually a baby toad. There was a laminated chart for all sorts of things like butterflies, moths, caterpillars and dragonflies. These charts were created by the University of Guelph and are perfect for these Discovery Programs in the provincial parks. Before I left the beach, the staff member told me that there was a sand piper living on the beach. So, I will have to come back later when there are no kids around to see if I can spot it. When I got back to camp we decided to go to the Visitor Center. Most Visitor Centers have displays and educational information on animals and birds and plants and things. So we hopped in the car and drove up there. Unfortunately the Visitor Center was closed. It is only ever open when they are doing special presentations or special events. We had to content ourselves with looking at the outdoor displays instead. there were three or four roofed boards with artwork of different birds and animals on them. And there was a display of an old dug out boat hanging from a chain under a roofed area. There was not much else to look at so we went back to the camp site. Back at the camp I had a little visitor on one of my storage containers. It was a little Banded-wing Fly. Other flying visitors we had were some Long Horn Pine Beetles. These guys were quite plentiful actually. I had them land on me a couple of times and so did mom. Which is a bit disconcerting considering they are known to bite. My mom and I had been eyeing up the hiking trails and we were excited to go hiking on the Lonesome Bog Trail. I mean, with a name like that, who wouldn't want to go and check it out. So we left dad behind with a good book to read and off we went to go on our hike. The trail is an easy 1.5 km walk around a small lake called Sausage Lake. There is a lookout on the far side of the lake. The trail winds along the shore of the lake and beside many old, dead, and dying pine trees. In a brochure that I read about the trail it says "Beaver are helping to speed its transition to a bog meadow". And sure enough, there was a beaver lodge out at the far end of the lake. The Lonesome Bog had all kinds of berries growing there. From blue berries (edible) and Blue Bead Lilies (poisonous) To pin cherries and Northern Comandra berries. The landscape felt wild and rugged. There were fuzzy insects like a St. Lawrence Tiger Moth caterpillar and a Tawny-tailed Bee Fly. The Lonesome Bog was aptly named. Looking out over the marshy bog, you got a sense of gloom and loneliness, but at the same time, it was also beautiful. The height of the trees made you feel small and insignificant. I stood looking up at them in awe and wonder. The pine trees here are mainly Black Spruce and Jack Pines. Jack Pines have cones that will only open to release its seeds after being exposed to very high temperatures such as the heat of a forest fire. Since the park had endured forest fires in the years 1875, 1910, 1925, and 1940 the Jack Pine has become a dominant species here. We came to a boardwalk through the tall, bare pines. On either side of the boardwalk there were different bog plants to be seen. There were a whole lot of Pitcher plants filled with water, waiting to catch their insect prey. The flowers of the Pitcher plants rose up out of the bog on long stalks. They looked like the periscopes on a submarine crossed with sunflowers or something. They were quite unusual looking. Tendrils of Creeping Snowberry were climbing over and around other plants. At various places on the trail there are places to stop and read about the area on information posts.
On the opposite side of Sausage Lake we came to the lookout. The lookout was not the usual lookout that you would expect to find. It was not at the top of some big hill overlooking the world below. Instead, it was a boardwalk out to the middle of an island like tree stand in the middle of the bog. There was a platform there with a bench to sit and rest and look around. However, the beginning of the boardwalk to the lookout was flooded and we almost didn't go to it. But we decided to brave the possibility of getting wet feet and we found a muddy path around the flooded area and managed to make it to the dry part of the boardwalk. We had to still be careful as we walked and not stay to close to each other because the board walk sank into the water a little with each step. But not enough to get soaked shoes so it was okay. We made it to the bench and sat down for a rest and a snack. I was glad we had decided to go to the lookout because it was beautiful here. We were hoping to see a moose on the trail. This would have been the perfect spot to see one. But, I guess it wasn't really the right time of day because we didn't see one. Even the subtle differences in colour of the bog grasses was a pretty sight. The last leg of the trail was back through the woods again. We saw a tree that had some sort of odd shaped berries on it. I had never seen one like this before. I think it was a Service Berry Tree of some sort, but I am not too sure. Near the very end of the trail we got a close up view of the beaver lodge that we had seen from the other side of the lake. We didn't see any beavers though. The end of the trail comes out at the road. It was only a short walk down the road and back to our car. Back at the campsite there were Beaked Hazelnut trees with their fruit dangling low on the branches. A little red squirrel was taking the opportunity to gather these Beaked Hazelnuts to hide away for his winter stash. And, although it was only August, there were other signs that winter wasn't going to stay away forever. The tips of some of the ferns were already turning yellow, as were some of the leaves on some of the trees. We had a late supper and cooked some hamburgers on the fire. We didn't have the fire going for too long though because the wind started to pick up and it started to rain a little bit. We moved into the dining tent to stay dry and to play some board games for awhile before bed.
Later on, as I lay in my sleeping bag in the dark, I listened to the strong winds blowing and the call of the loons from across the lake. It was like a lullaby to me as I drifted off to sleep. I loved it! I had almost overlooked Esker Lakes Park when making my camping plans but luckily my mom suggested it when we were figuring out which camp to go to together. This park is a quiet little gem. It is a place to disconnect from the world and connect with nature. And by this I mean literally disconnect. There is no cell service here at all. So put away your phones and other hand held devices and enjoy the beauty all around you. The park may be a bit remote but it is not hard to find. The signs showing how to get there were great! There was a new sign every 5 or less kilometers as well as two big welcome signs. Despite having come from different directions and having left at different times, my parents showed up at the park only about 2 minutes after I had arrived. We went into the office together to register and I bought my Ontario Parks passport sticker and a bag of firewood. The staff were very friendly and helpful. The roads are a bit winding with a lot of curves through the park and it was a little tricky to find our site. However, it didn't take too long to find our site (#68). The permit post had a spot for the main permit and another for an additional vehicle permit. We had asked for a site with a view to the lake. Looking at the map, this site was one of the closest to the lake but there wasn't much of a view. There were too many trees between us and the lake; most of them were old, dead jack pines. But the site was definitely private and the ground was nice and flat for our tents. We were pretty happy with the site. After setting up camp we were free to just sit and relax and enjoy the dragonflies. And there are a great many dragonflies here. There were large, green Darners that refused to sit still for a picture. And there were bright red White-faced Meadow Hawks that would still and sun themselves on the raspberry leaves. It was so nice to feel free to relax and enjoy the dragonflies. Work had been hectic for me and my parents had been stressed over their RV that needed many costly repairs so it was nice to just forget all that and leave it behind us for a few days. Our site was not too far away from the comfort station. I headed over there to take a shower. On the way over I spotted a ground hog who I think lives in the grassy area around the comfort station. The colouring on him was quite striking. We both stopped and eyed each other up for a minute or two until I finally conceded the staring contest and let him win. I walked away and he went back his supper of grasses, clovers, and dandelions. The comfort station was adequate. It was not very big and it was not very fancy. But who needs fancy when you are camping. The thing that concerned me about this bathroom was that it was never properly cleaned. Throughout the number of days we stayed, we watched the cleaning crew go in and spend less than a couple of minutes in here each day. Nor were the showers cleaned properly. A word to the wise... wear sandals or some sort of foot wear when taking a shower here. The water was hot, but you have to keep in constant motion in order to keep the water running so that the motion sensor knows you are there. There are very few things that I didn't like about this park. Aside from the lack of cleanliness of the bathroom and showers the only other thing that gave me cause for concern was the sign posted outside the comfort station on the Event Board. It stated that an AED device was available at the gatehouse during store hours but when the gatehouse was closed we were to phone the Duty Officer's cell phone. That's great that they have an AED machine in case of someone having a heart attack, but as you may recall me mentioning previously, there is no cell signal in this park. Zero. So, in the case of an emergency, there wouldn't be a way to phone this duty officer after store hours. Looks like a bit of a catch 22 to me. We had arrived late in the afternoon so there was limited amount of daylight left on our first day. We decided to make a fire and get supper started before it got too dark. I got out my box of water proof matches. There was only one left in the box (I had another box, so that was not a problem). When I pulled out the match I laughed because the match was smaller than a toothpick! It was a teeny, tiny, baby match! How cute! Needless to say, we got a fire going using the other matches and enjoyed a nice meal cooked over the fire. We sat around the fire until it was nothing but coals. Then it was off to bed. The park is so quiet. There is no noise from neighbouring camps. No partying, and no talking. It is oh so wonderfully peaceful. The only noises I hear are that of a loon with a funny sounding call from across the lake, and the sound of something, ever so faintly, chewing on a near by tree. II would never hear the chewing sound if the park wasn't so quiet. Perhaps there is a porcupine up in the tree. But seeing as I was already nestled snuggly in my sleeping bag, I decided that was something that could be investigated tomorrow.
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AuthorOur family members have always been avid campers. It's in our genes. Rain or shine or sometimes wind and occasionally the odd snow fall, there we are with a tent and a smile. Thanks for taking the time to read about all of my adventures!
I hope you are out there having your own adventures! - Dana W. Categories
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