It was such a beautiful morning. The yellow Meadow Salsify flowers seemed to be shining as bright as the sun. Penny said that she had been up earlier that morning and that it had down poured for about 5 minutes. You couldn't even tell it had rained at all at this point.
We didn't drive there. It was within walking distance of our campsite. We walked the roads until we got to the trailhead.
We stopped for a rest here and we saw a female cardinal on the ledge of the railing. It flew off too quickly for me to get a picture of it though. As a matter of fact we saw cardinals many times while we were in Darlington Park, but I was never able to get a picture. For a bird so brightly coloured, they sure are camera shy.
Through the trees we could see the tall grasses and gleaming waters of McLaughlin Bay.
A female Red Winged Blackbird was perched in the tree above our heads.
The fly's eggs are inserted near the developing buds of the plant. After hatching, the larvae migrate to an area below the plant's developing buds, where they then induce the plant's tissues to form into the hardened, bulbous chamber referred to as a gall.
While we sat, we watched a black squirrel romp through the grass. It had a small white tuft to its tail that made it look like it was a cross between a squirrel and a skunk.
The McLaughlin Bay Wildlife Reserve borders Darlington Park. This is where Lady Google had sent us the day before instead of the park entrance. It knew that the park border was here but it didn't know that the entrance technically wasn't, even though you could get there through the connecting hiking trails.
We went back the way we had come and we got to see all the wonderful swans and visit all the beautiful spots again for a second time.
We also got to see a few new critters along the way, like a toad hiding in the grass.
I started searching the trees to see what birds I could find. I could hear them but I couldn't really see them through the thick foliage of the maple leaves that were striped in various shades of green.
We took a moment to look around and enjoy the view of the gulls silhouetted against the evening sky before attempting the climb.
The trail actually joined up to the one that Penny and I had found on the other side of the fence when we first arrived at camp. It was a bit steep but we had been on much more difficult trails on previous backpacking trips so we were able to navigate it with a bit of effort.