Cuckoo Valley Overlook

My next favourite walk on the Bruce Trail is the section south of Johnson's Sideroad to the viewpoint at Cuckoo Valley Overlook.  The trail wanders through forest punctuated with huge old trees on the side of the valley slope, past the top of a waterfall, up the stream and out into a high meadow - from which you get this view to the east.

You are looking across the upper Beaver Valley, into the much smaller Cuckoo Valley, where you can see the cliffs of the escarpment, and the green cedar trees along the top and below.  If you were able to fly over there and peek around the corner to the left, you would see this waterfall, Eugenia Falls.

This waterfall was the site of a 3-week gold rush in 1853, the Eugenia Gold Rush - until they figured out that the 'gold' was pyrite or 'fool's gold'.

The walk through the forest in mid-October is beautiful with the leaves turning.  I end up taking numerous photos.

 

Looking north you can look down toward the wider valley.  The tower on the right hand side is one of the surge towers on the Eugenia Power Plant, the second oldest in Ontario, 100 years old next year.  It would make a good story in its own right; my uncle ran the power plant in the late 1940's.

 

Through the woods you come out to the high meadow, and after trudging uphill a bit, you find a bench where you can sit and admire the view.  When we were there in October two years ago the New England Asters were everywhere.

Like most of the trail, you can also walk here in the winter - on snowshoes.  It's a bit of a long walk if the snow is deep and fresh, but if anyone has preceded you, it's easy.  I always stop to admire this cluster of 8 beech trees right beside the trail, so close together they're like one big tree. 

 And this huge bracket fungus sits on one of those beech trees.

The trail goes by the top of this waterfall, so you don't get much of a view, but I struggled down the very steep slope two years ago to get this picture, a 30 foot high frozen curtain of ice.  Do you understand now why this section is known as the 'Falling Water Trail'?