Bruce Trail Hike

I joined a 'new members hike' on the Bruce Trail last week, along with several other executive members.  We walked around the Margaret Paull Side Trail for those of you who may know it, and then through the Sly property, forming a large loop.  The Sly property was one of the early acquisitions by the Bruce Trail Conservancy in this area.

The hike started off down an old road allowance and we had a distant view of Georgian Bay from a viewpoint I've never see before.  You're looking northwest here, over the town of Thornbury.

It was simply a beautiful spring day in the woods, though there were a few blackflies.  The most interesting part of the walk here was through the forest overlooking a deep ravine leading down to Indian Brook.

The leaves are pretty well out, and still that vivid bright green of spring.  Some nice trees in this forest too!

A small tributary wanders over the bedrock through the forest, and then over the very thin layers of the Manitoulin dolostone, before tumbling down into the ravine below.   I was able to fill some of the new members in on the interesting geology of the place.

All along the way the trail was beckoning.  This is my kind of hiking trail, and this walk was at a reasonably slow pace, so I actually kept up with the group.  

We were out on the hayfields again when we ended, looking west over the Carr Observatory run by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC).  It has overnight accomodation for enthusiastic amateur astronomers, and a large telescope, in the garage on the right (the entire roof rolls off for night viewing.  I'm told the smaller domes are private personal observatories.  I've seen similar ones in several other locations around the valley, this being a good region for dark skies.

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