Swimming With A Duck

Fairbank Park is just as lovely as its name implies. It's not a large park but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in simplistic beauty.  Even the office was a tiny  little building.

We weren't staying long. Just one night.  I brought my friend, Rod, with me and we were going to meet up with more friends the next day at a different park. 

We got site number 28.  It was perfect!  We arrived at about 4 pm and began to set up camp. 

The site was very large. There was room for my large 10 man tent and a car.

There was also room for my screened dining tent with tons of space in between everything.  We could easily have gotten another 3 or 4 tents on this site if we had to. The only downfalls were that the pegs were difficult to get into the ground, and the picnic table was not in very good condition. But it was still usable. 

A nice feature to this site was a set of stairs leading down to our own private water access.  The site to the left of us also had direct access to the lake. 

We had a beautiful view of the lake and the water was clear, clean, and looked inviting. 

While we were setting up, I spotted a little American Toad.  He blended in pretty good with his surroundings. 

But he didn't want to stick around for long and soon he hopped away. 

Another nice thing about our site was that it wasn't too far away from the bathrooms. 

Unfortunately, the water taps were not usable though. The water was not good for drinking.

There must have been some problem with the bathrooms because most of them were locked.  Out of 4 there were 2 that were not locked. 

But they had brought in a port-a-potty and positioned it beside the other bathrooms. So, there was never a line up for the bathroom. 

The toilets were flush toilets and were wheelchair accessible. However, they could use a bit of an update. They looked a bit old and worn. 

Site 57 is a barrier free campsite and was situated right across from the bathrooms.

We finished setting up camp by about 5:15 pm and decided to go on a hike on the Wa-Shai-Ga-Mog trail. 

The Wa-Shai-Ga-Mog hiking trail is just a half a kilometer long and is an easy hike. It is the only hiking trail in the park. It has some numbered points of interest, but there were no brochures available to give any details about those points of interest.

The sun was shining bright through the trees as we began the hike.  There were no bugs to bother us. 

​Right from the start there was an upwards climb. But it was nothing too strenuous.

The trail was marked with yellow markers. Some were spray painted arrows on the ground. I joked to Rod that "wouldn't it be fun if the arrows glowed in the dark?".

After climbing the hill, the ground started to level out and there were fewer trees. 

There was a nice lookout spot with a bench to sit on so that you can enjoy the view.

And the view was beautiful. You could see clear across the lake and the sky was blue with little puffs of white clouds passing by. 

Rod and I wandered around the hilltop; exploring the area. 

We noticed some holes in the rock that were painted yellow. On the map this was called "Drill Holes". Since we didn't have a brochure with details we just assumed that these yellow holes were the drill holes and that there was a story of some sort behind them. 

A little red squirrel watched us from a fallen log as he munched on some acorns. There were a whole lot of acorns in this area. 

The trail was well groomed and lovely. It had sections that were bordered by pine trees, mosses, and grasses.

When we reached another open area that over looked the lake, we could see many dragonflies soaring over head. No wonder we didn't have any bugs bothering us! 

We took note of each of the yellow numbers as we passed them. Number ten was "the pit". It looked more like a bunch of dead leaves in a crevasse in the rocks. But again, I am sure there is some sort of story behind it. 

Of course, what goes up, must come down. It was at about this point where we started our decent down the hill. It was a bit steep ands we had to be careful as we watched our step and tried to keep our balance. 

At the bottom of the hill the trail became rough with rocks and boulders. 

But we got to walk next to the lake for the last part of the trail. 

The trail ended at the boat launch and we had to walk up the road just a little bit to where we had parked our car.

I was disappointed to see that someone had left a tire sitting in the shallow water along the shoreline. 

The hike only took us about a half an hour, maybe 45 minutes tops. So we had plenty of time to explore the rest of the park. We decided to go and check out the main beach. 

As you enter the parking lot for the main beach , there is a pet exercise area off to the right.  

It  doesn't have anything special, but it does have a place for pets to go into the water and for their human companions to sit down and rest. 

The main beach is fairly large and you can only see part of it from the parking lot entrance. The long sandy beach goes to a point, but if you walk to the point you will find that there is even more beach on the other side. 

The water was crystal clear and the beach was made up of soft, clean beach sand. 

The buoy lines were quite far out, which meant that there was plenty of space to swim in. The view across the lake was also nice. 

On the other side of the buoys I saw a green and red marker. I believe these are to warn boats of rocks beneath the surface of the water. 

On the other side of the point, the beach continues on. There are also more picnic tables there too.

At this end of the beach there is a jungle gym with slides for kids to play on.

And there is a volley ball net too. 

There is a small bathroom/ change house with the sinks in the outside of the building. 

Rod and I started walking back towards the car. Before we got there, we noticed a hill with a large concrete pad on top of it. I am not sure what this is for. I speculate that it may have once been a picnic shelter. Or perhaps it is in preparation for one to be built at a future date.

As we were driving back to our campsite, I spotted the sign for the group campsite. Out of curiosity, I thought I would stop and check it out. 

As with most group sites, the campsite was very large with a whole lot of picnic tables on it. 

But these picnic tables were in terrible shape. It was like this was the picnic table graveyard where all the picnic tables came to die.  When I stopped to think about  it, I realized that most of the picnic tables that I had seen throughout the park were in bad condition and needed to be either repaired or replaced.

At the far end of the group site I noticed that they had their very own bathroom and water faucet that was separate from the rest of the park. 

There was also a mysterious trail that led away from the site. Naturally I was curious. So I followed it to see where it would lead.

It led me right to the back of the comfort station and to the showers.

We peeked in the showers to see if they were any good. They weren't the best but they weren't the worst either. 

However, the brick work around the building was in need of repair. Rod actually tripped over a section of the path where there were some bricks missing. And you could see where more were starting to come loose. It was a bit of a safety hazard. 

We walked around to the front of the building and I noticed that there was a port-a-potty outside this bathroom too. I am not sure why though because these bathrooms seemed to be in working order. 

There was a laundry room in between the doors of the men's side and the women's side. 

I went in to use the washroom and noticed right away that the building felt old and dingy. It was time for this building to get a facelift. You could tell that they had tried to spruce it up a bit in the past with a coat of paint. But they did a really bad job of it. there was over paint on the frames of the window and and doors. The walls were dirty and although it looked like a relatively new hand dryer had been installed, they did not pre-paint where the old one used to be. Older colours of paint were still visible. 

Inside the stalls were no better. The walls needed painting, the toilets were dirty and so were the floors. 

The mirrors were old and the countertop had seen better days. 

On the way out it was very noticeable that the door needed some paint and that the last time they painted the walls, they did not bother to use painters tape to mask off the door frame. Even the kick plate had something splashed across it that reminded me of a scene from a horror movie. Despite the poor shape of the comfort station and the picnic tables, the rest of the park was quite nice. Nice enough that I could almost forgive the state of those things and just felt more sorry that they didn't seem to have the money or the man power to remedy it. If those things were tended to, then this park would be a little gem. 

I stepped outside the door to find another American Toad at my feet. They seem to be plentiful here. Later that night, the kids next to our site spent most of the evening with flashlights and buckets catching toads. We could hear them calling out to one another things like "I just found a super tiny toad!" They were having a grand ole time. 

It was a very hot day. By the time we got back to camp, I was ready for a swim.  I noticed a female Mallard duck swimming near the steps that led down to the lake. 

I sat and watched her for a bit and I hesitated to go in the water because I didn't want to scare her off. I figured that I would just wait until she swam away. But she wouldn't leave. 

Eventually I got in the water anyways, figuring that once I got in the lake she would get scared and swim away. But she didn't. Instead she just swam around while I swam around.  I didn't make any fast or wild movements and she felt comfortable just swimming nearby about 10 to 15 feet away from me.

The water wasn't too cold and it was so clear that  it was wonderful to swim there. I could see why the duck wouldn't want to leave. 

​When I was done swimming and got out of the water, she was still hanging out and swimming near by.  I had never swam with a duck before. It was a very peaceful experience.

When it was starting to get dark, we made a fire and cooked up some hotdogs for supper. While we sat and drank hot chocolate, we looked out over the lake and watched the boats coming in for the night.

One boat in particular caught our attention because it had many different colour changing lights on it. It was very pretty as it went by in the twilight. (My camera did a horrible job of capturing the lights on the boat.... but it makes for an interesting design). 

Not long after that, the moon came out. It was a beautiful bright orange and it reflected an orange light off of the surface of the lake. It was quite beautiful and serene. 

After awhile, the wind started to pick up and we decided to call it a night and headed on into the tent. I wished that we had more time to stay even longer. One night hardly seemed long enough. But we were off on another adventure in the morning so I guess I will have to come back here again one day.