Saying Good Bye To Killarney

I woke up in the morning to the sound of woodpeckers knocking on the tree just above our campsite. I grabbed my camera and ever so quietly headed for the tent door.  Just as I reached for the zipper, the neighbouring campsite started making noises and talking and I knew that my opportunity was lost. I was so disappointed. 

So I crawled back into my sleeping bag for a bit and listened to the stirrings of the various campsites beginning to wake up. Luckily though the new campsite neighbours were pretty quiet people and they were actually packing up to leave. They were only making minimal noise and it wasn't long before one of the wood peckers came back.  Once again I grabbed my camera, and I slipped out the tent door  and managed to get a couple of grainy not so good pictures of a female Pileated Woodpecker. 

Once Heather got up and we had our breakfast we had to make the decision on whether we wanted to tackle the Cranberry Bog Trail. We had to tear down the tents, pack up  and be off the site by 2 pm, plus our feet were still aching from hiking the previous day, so we opted to just walk around and see the other side of the park instead of doing the hike. I think we made the right choice. Just walking up the hill to the car was making our feet hurt. 

So once we were pretty much packed up we took a walk down to the main beach to see how it compared to the smaller beach that we had already been to. 

There was a nice winding set of stairs that led to the main beach. 

The exact way to the beach was a little unclear, since there were no signs that said "This Way To The Beach" or anything. But we had the paper map and we just kind of winged it. 

As we descended down the stairs we noticed some informational signs that were encased in plastic that we hadn't noticed before.  As we walked along we spotted more and more of them.  Turns out that these signs belong to some sort of Orienteering Course that you can do while you are there. 

The stairs to the beach led us past the place where the canoe rental storage area is. I have never seen as many canoe racks as they have here. There were rows upon rows of them about 5 racks deep on both sides of the path. Canoeing is clearly a popular activity for this park. 

Kayaking is also popular here. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Killarney also offered the rental of stand up paddle boards  which you could rent from the Killarney Outfitters located about 4 minutes down the road from the park. 

Just before we reached the shore we saw the giant sign saying "No cans or bottles". It is the little things like this that I am sure help to keep this park as clean as this one is. You can tell that they care and take pride in their park. 

The main beach was just as sandy and almost as nice as the smaller one was. However I think that the view from the smaller beach was much nicer. 

The other thing was that this beach had a number of run off drainage pipes buried in the sand all over the place to route the rain waters that come from down the hill into the lake without it washing away the beach sand. All though these are necessary I guess, they do detract from the otherwise beautiful beach. 

We walked the shore line until we came to the dog beach on the other side. It's one of the nicest looking dog beaches I have seen in a provincial park so far. What we didn't know at the time was if we had just gone a little further from this point we could have seen the Yurts that this park has. I guess that will have to be saved for a future visit. 

Right beside the dog beach is the other entrance to the La Cloche Silhouette hiking trail which begins with a boardwalk bridge. 

The edge of the water was lined with beautiful flowers such as this Joe-Pye weed. 

Up in the grass we passed by this Wooly Bear caterpillar.

Close to here was another nice convenience that the park provides. Not only can you rent canoes and kayaks, but if you bring your own then they have a public rack that you can use to to store it on. 

It was getting close to two o'clock and it was time to go home. We went back tot he site and finished with the last of the packing. We said good bye to the chipmunks and then headed for home. 

Despite the rather over cast and chilly weather we had, we still had a really good time. It isn't any wonder why this park is the favourite of almost everyone who comes here. I have a feeling that not only will we come back to do the La Cloche trail, but we will probably be back many more times after that.