Monday, March 16, 2009

The Way a Weekend Should Be

The temperatures were above zero each day this weekend, the sun shone mercilessly, we ate lunch on the deck, hung the laundry on the line and enjoyed two fabulous hikes. We have three provincial parks at our door steps here, two of which we visited this weekend.



















Arrowhead on Saturday (pictured above), for a look at Stubb's Falls. Here we climbed big boulders, watched huge sheets of ice come down stream and break apart as they are swept over the short falls. We collected tons of birch park off the ground and had a few runs down the tubing at the end of the day.









Sunday was Algonquin park. At the visitor centre we watched blue jays, evening grosbeaks (whose colours are stunning), finches of all kinds. We decided to explore the Big Pine trail, which is the proud home to over 75 majestic white pines which are over 250 years old (they can reach ages of 350 years). The biggest white pine on the trail measured 37 metres tall, has a diameter of 1.4 metres and weighs an estimated 20 tonnes. They were truly amazing. Along the trail we learned about the importance of fire, the mark lightening can leave, some history of logging, the best conditions for large white pines and how stunning these enormous trees are.
The warm weather is supposed to continue this week, which is fabulous because we have hiking with guests in the plans.

2 comments:

grammyjan said...

Looks fabulous. What a great weekend

Karen said...

Look grammyjan must have written the password down where she can find it again - lol -nice to see you here so much. Does that mean the pictures of grampy in all his finery aren't far behind?

Emma that picture of the 2 boys peaking through the tree is gorgeous. Definitely deserves cropping and framing.
We were at Rattlesnake point on the weekend and talking about how if your boys had been there, there would have likely been rope, which would have meant some cliff scaling.

miss you

K