Visiting Inglis Falls

Last weekend was a holiday weekend in Canada, and our daughter, her husband and our grandson came to visit.  He's four, and a never-ending bundle of energy and mischief!  One day we headed up to Owen Sound to visit Inglis Falls.  Our destination was the 'potholes', but first of course we had to look around the falls itself.

I've posted pictures of Inglis Falls more than once before - last winter when it was completely frozen over, and last November, when the river was flowing high after a lot of rain.  In comparison, this is normal mid-summer flow.

We parked beside the old mill pond, which offered some beautiful reflections.  And the parking lot was full, with lots of visitors including other besides ourselves having a picnic lunch.

The pothole trail was the other direction, but first we headed over to look at the falls, Nana quite concerned that the four-year old didn't fall over the cliff!

As always, it's simply a beautiful waterfall.

I like looking closely at various parts of the falls.  They vary a lot depending on water flow, and in my more adventurous years, I would have climbed up these steps.

Along the short trail to the best viewpoints I'm always impressed by the roots of the cedar trees, which somehow manage to grow directly out of the bedrock, finding nutrients and moisture in the tiny crevices of the limestone.


Back beside the mill pond, I always note these old millstones.  I've been told that my great-grandfather carried his grain to this mill from his farm 2-3 miles west, to be ground into flour.

Past the millstones is a bridge directly above the falls, and you get a good view of the small dam holding back the mill pond.  The large pipe that provided water to the mill is buried underground mostly, to the right of the picture.

This time I took a careful look at the display, which I think has been renewed and improved.  This is a wonderful old illustration of the mill in its heyday, with the falls on the left, the entry where today's parking lot is on the upper right, and the foundation of the mill extending down about 4 stories below the cliff.  It was quite a major operation, but the entire mill burned to the ground in 1945.

This large picture posted on the outside of the small interpretive building shows the mill from above the falls, where it seems like a much smaller building.  There's still a bridge where this one is shown, with the water vanishing over the cliff just behind it.  In the upper right circle is the opposite view, showing how the mill extended down over the cliff to the foundation below.  A small remnant of the stone foundation is still there, though hard to get to.

Tomorrow, the potholes.

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