A Nice Drive

Well I have to admit something - even though we enjoyed the geology hike, the scenery and the habitats were spectacular, and I got to see the Fossil Hill Formation, we were exhausted by the end.  I think the uneven footing, the rain, and the steady pace, just did us in.

We were staying in a B&B that night, thinking that we might also join  the second geology hike the next day, but when morning dawned and we still felt tired, and it was spitting snow outside, we decided not to.  Instead we enjoyed a leisurely drive home, stopping at several places to enjoy the view over Georgian Bay.  The snow stopped within a few miles and we made a great day of it.

These pictures are along the south shore of Colpoy's Bay, the first one looking back up the bay to the town of Wiarton in the west.  The second picture is the cliffs directly across the bay from us.  A large tract of land here was purchased in a public fund-raising drive three years ago, by a group of non-profit conservation organizations.  The Bruce Trail runs all along the top of these cliffs.

Here you can see the escarpment bluffs on the left, and the outlines of Hay and White Cloud Islands on the right.  The low bit of land in between is Cape Croker, near where we hiked the previous day.  But it was the foreground that struck me in this picture.  Someone had left a handful of small stones on top of the larger rock, and I wondered how long they'd last til a storm washes them off.

Our next stop was a little further around the bay, at Big Bay, where Keppel Croft Garden is.  I posted some pictures of both the bay and the garden back on July 12 - 16 - quite a different impression today on a gray November day compared to a sunny summer day!

This is the spot that advertises itself as the 'Skipping Stone Capital of Canada', and it's easy to see why when you're on the beach.

The entire beach here is small rounded but flat rocks, perfect for skipping across the surface of the water.  These are old beach deposits, pieces of rock broken off the escarpment a few 100 yards to the south of us here.  Keppel Croft garden is actually built on these old beach deposits, and uses rocks like this for mulch!

Looking down the beach the skipping rocks extended as far as the beach itself, and I did try a few, just to be sure they worked properly!

No patterns in the sand here, but some interesting patterns in the rocks.