Yesterday the weathermen were promising no rain so we decided to travel to one of the not so far away provincial parks. We chose Petroglyphs Provincial Park near Peterborough as we had never been before. The main part of the park is based around some aboriginal rock carvings found at the site.
When we arrived we first went to the Visitors Centre where you can see the history of the site and the meanings of some of the animals, birds, mineral etc to the aboriginals of the area. After visiting here we then went to see the actual petroglyphs. They are housed in a huge greenhouse type building specially constructed to protect the carvings from the elements which have been gradually destroying them over the years.
Inside the building is a concrete walkway around a large ground level rock face with hundreds of carvings of turtles, people, animals etc. The meanings of some are displayed around the edge, but apparently many are not known. Unfrtunately because of spiritual beliefs you are not allowed to take photos, so I cannot share the experience with you. But this picture is from one of the local travel sites.
After experiencing this we then took one of the trails in the park. this park is unusual in that it closes at 5.30pm and no camping, boating etc is allowed, so you have to be sure you can compete your trails before the park closes. We chose to take the Nanabush Trail which is 5.5 km in length and classed as moderate.
The trail goes through woodland and then over a boardwalk over some marshy areas. This is where we saw a snake. This is a Northern Water Snake apparently.
We watched it for quite some time and then it just toppled into the water and disappeared and we carried on our way. The trail eventually takes you round Minnow lake, a small lake, but very pretty.
It then meanders back into woodland. Once thing we noticed was that we didn’t see any other wildlife at all, other than the snake, but we did see lots of fungi.
On the way back we once again went across the boardwalk and saw the snake, this time in the water. After a few minutes we realized there were actually two of them.
You can see its markings here.
A good day out!
As most of the people in Canada celebrated Canada Day with parties and entertainments thrown by their local tows and cities we decided to do something different. We decided to celebrate Canada by admiring what Canada does best – nature!
It was going to be a glorious day so we decided to go to a local provincial park. We decided in the end to go to Frontenac, simply because for some reason we had never been there before. It is about an hour or so from our house and we chose to go the scenic rater than the highway route.
We set out reasonably early just in case it got too hot later and hopefully before all the bugs woke up. We arrived about 10.30 and paid for our day pass at the info centre ($12). I asked the guy which trails we should take and he suggested three. Two which led off the info centre and another further into the park. He warned us that the deer flies were at their worst at the moment – great! So out came the caps, sunscreen, mozzie repellant etc and off we went.
The first trail we tried was the Arab Lake Gorge Loop which was about 1.5 km. Most of this was in wooded areas along side a stream. We saw lots of mushrooms, squirrels and chipmunks. it took us about 45 mins to do this bit.
We then did the Doe Lake Loop which comes off the first one. This was more interesting as not only did we go through lots of woodland, but also streams and of course Doe lake itself which the trail skirts for much of the distance (3km). We kept stopping off to take picture of various things.
We came across one area where there were lots of dragonflies, most of them happy to pose for photos!
The scenery here is beautiful and there were lots of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, dragonflies and bugs. Yep, by this time the bugs were starting to become a pain. We kept dosing ourselves with bug spray which kept them from landing on us and biting but they still buzzed around a lot which took out the enjoyment. We decided once we finished the tail that we would not go onto the next one. Because the park is so close to us we can come again when the bugs are not so annoying.
After leaving the park we drove around the area for a while and went across to the Loughborough Lake area an then after a few hours made our way back home.
Overall we had a good day out despite the bugs and celebrated Canada Day our way!
