Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada
For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. ~ Revelation 7:17
We felt great when we got up this morning! So thankful!
We began the day a little more slowly, as we went kayaking. You know. Work the arms, not the legs. Except I had to foot pump up the inflatable boat. It was fine, but I had to switch legs more often than usual because they were getting tired more quickly. Gee. I wonder why?
On the way there, not too many minutes after we left home, we spied a deer chowing down alongside the road. There was nothing else until we were on the lake where we saw, 3-4 loons, a couple of seagulls, possibly one fish, a common merganser family, something hiding under a rock that had tiny claws (crawfish maybe?) and one bald eagle.
And not another single, solitary human being the entire two hours we were here.
There are no words . . .
It was so absolutely quiet most of the time!
The only sound was our paddles and the boat skimming the water, unless the loons were talking to each other.
We even saw a sunbow! I don’t know what else to call it – – it was a rainbow beside the sun! We’ve never seen one of those before, and it didn’t photograph well, but if you look to the right of the sun, the sort of brown backwards “c” shape is where the bow was!
Spectacular morning!
Check out this cute little island!
Blaine did . . . .
And there he goes . . .
….leaving me with nothing to do but sit in the boat and take random pictures of the island’s foliage.
Another random . . .
By the way, he didn’t find anything.
Meet the Common Merganser family
Actually, one of the chicks was the first to jump ship and take off away from us.
Mama and the others followed suit.
No worries. They’re all still with her, they’re just bunched up so you can’t see them all.
Here’s what they looked like! Oh to be able to take pictures like this!
Next you can listen to the haunting song of the loon. It was carrying on, but by the time I got ready, I only captured a tiny bit.
If you look close, right in the center of the picture, there’s a white spec.
That’s an eagle!
And that’s as close as he let us get. But the video shows him flying, and you can hear the loons hollering about him being on the fly.
The ‘claws’ were under that center rock.
Camera shy!
After we packed it up, we made tracks back to where we were yesterday to visit the “Sea Lion”. It’s a one mile round trip hike, but you have to start from the parking lot like yesterday, which adds some additional mileage. Remember the sign I showed you yesterday? So it’s actually about 3 miles round trip.
We couldn’t figure out why this thing was called a sea lion. It looked more like a sea horse – when it was intact anyway. So I checked to see if seahorses were ever called sea lions. Nope. But then I discovered that a sea lion is a mythical creature with the head of a lion and tail of a fish, and it appears on some Navy crests. So there you have it. I’m guessing somebody in the Navy a long time ago, named it. 😊
More climbing today!
But not much, which is good since I was wearing my sneakers instead of boots!
Now doesn’t that look like a seahorse to you?
We set off looking for more, but there wasn’t any more.
So we came back for a few more pictures on the way out.
This tree was seeping gobs of sap.
Next we drove back up the road to the Wildlife Trail. It was at least worth a shot! A long shot . . .
We didn’t walk very far on this one. It was all overgrown and since I chose it, I told Blaine I just wasn’t feeling this one. So we turned around. We met a couple coming towards us and told them we’d turned around, and they asked if there was something bad ahead. Nope. Just decided it wasn’t for us.
Blaine wanted to make a brief stop at the Marie Louise Lake overlook.
Then we drove back down the road again, and did the 2.5 mile round trip Ravine Lake Trail. Blaine chose this one and it was pretty diverse, but the reward was minimal and had mosquitoes. I think we just got spoiled with yesterday and this morning. Nothing was making us happy. : 0
This is Ravine Lake.
Fortunately, it was a loop trail and the way back was easier than the climb down we had. : )
This is a mushroom.
Last up on our “To Do” list, was a 10.8-mile drive around Marie Louise Lake. This didn’t turn out very well either. Most of the time, we couldn’t even see the lake other than a few glimpses through the trees and brush. There were 20 primitive campsites bunched together along this one-way road. That means, if you’re staying there, you have to drive all the way around to get back home.
And we’re headed home for the day.
Cough! Cough! Choke! Choke!
Tomorrow we move.