Picture day! A Giant Blue Heron.

The heat wave has broken this morning in gallons of rain falling from the sky.  And just in time, the heat was starting to make my poor hubby sick.  And far too soon, I was just getting acclimatized to the heat and it wasn't bothering me as much.  The hottest day by far was monday while we were on the road.  We drove through miles of farm land and the dust and the sweet smell of hay hung suspended in the dirty air.  By yesterday I was feeling like doing more than sitting in front of the air conditioner and tried to finish the last of the unpacking.

So here are a couple pictures of our time in Haliburton.  We don't stay in the town, we stay in out camping trailer on my brother's property.  We have a kitchen tent, a barbecue, table, chairs, cooking utensils and we can use their fridge and freezer. It's quite a nice set up. We sleep outdoors with nothing but some thin tent canvas between us and the critters so we have to strictly adhere to the rules of proper bear-proofing.  No food in the tent, no garbage laying out, no food where it's easily reached by bears. Get the idea that bears are a problem?  Coyotes and wolves are also a real threat.  Smaller critters such as possums, raccoons, skunks and porcupines are more of a nuisance than a threat.  

Let us start with this magnificent Blue Heron. This was taken at the West Guillford beach.  West Guillford is a tiny little village with a tiny little beach, a tiny little grocery store that sells the the best fresh local meat EVAR and a tiny little french fry/ice cream stand that sells the BEST. ICE CREAM. EVAR. Why is it that those tacky little wooden food stands with the rickety picnic table serve such good stuff? Is the quality of food inversely proportional to the prettiness of the place it is cooked in?

This is more of the beach. It's small, surrounded by green and quite natural and unspoiled.  There are thousands of tiny minnows swimming in the shallow water and there are thousands of fresh water clam shells.  We founda few living clams.  The clams bury themselves and stick out a breathing feeding tube from their shell.  Look for the tiny bubbles to find living clams.

This looking the opposite way to the creek that feeds the lake.  Those are sedges and reeds.  There were larger fish in the deeper colder water.

 

This is a forest road.  Much of the terrain looks identical to this, only without the wheel ruts.  The area was extensively logged, but you can still see evidence of the old gian trees if you know how to look.  The stumps are almost all rotted, but you can see the contours of fallen trees on the ground covered in moss.  That strange soft spongy ridge is probably a tee that fell over a hundred years ago.,

The road took us to this old abandoned sugar shack where Amy was filming a creepy artsy movie for a contest.

The next day Steve and Dave also came to the beach.  Here they are relaxing and watching the kids.

 

These are the footprints that greeted us one morning.  They are dog-like and way too big to be Luna. Wolf? Coyote?  Bear? Sasquatch? One last picture:

 

The view outside or camper door.  The land rises steeply upward as we are parked on the side of a rather large granite ridge.  Everything is on a series of forested granite ridges. You can see why were were visited by so many forest critters, what with being right in the middle of their habitat.

Tonight we have a full slate: Cruising On King Street" is tonight: the parade with all the old cars, grocery shopping (fun? wow.) and hopefully getting Dan and Heather's air conditioner installed.  We'll have to jury rig it somehow, and it won't be pretty...but it will make their apartment livable on hot summer days.

And that's all.  Later.