Kayaking in the rain!

This has been a very busy spring spent mostly, chasing around a very active 18 month old son. That is not to say that I have not gotten out to the outdoors, I have and actually a fair amount. My wife says that I am one of those people who need the stimulus of being out in nature. Being the best wife in the whole world and understanding me the way she does she makes sure I get the chance to indulge in some outdoor activity on a very regular basis. So this spring I have been busy with the kids but I have also done a fair bit of hiking, cycling, birdwatching and even the odd bit of running, with the emphasis being on the odd bit!

Having said all that, what I have not done is spent a whole lot of time writing on this blog about it,....er....ok, I have spent zero time on it! So I hereby promise not to let that happen again! OK! OK! maybe I won't make promises that I won't necessarily keep. Hows this: I'll try not to let that happen again!

My daughter Heather kayaking on Lake Ontario

Anyways a fellow blogger who is much more prolific than I at writing suggested that everyone reading his blog tell their friends, etc, and we all go for a paddle Saturday night and take a photo at sunset while living in the moment. Well that sounded intriguing and I really don't require much convincing to get into a canoe or kayak. So Saturday comes and the forecast is for thunderstorms. Well the kayaks were on the roof! Heather, one of my daughters was visiting for the weekend and it looks clear for a while just after noon. So we jump in the van and head down to the lake. Just east of Bowmanville marina there is a little sandy area where I will sometimes launch. As we pulled up to park there was a Great Blue Heron wading at the waters edge 15 feet from the van. When we opened the doors it flew but it was there again a couple of hours later when we came back. Must be good eats!

The lake was remarkably calm as you can see from the photos and due to the forecasts there were no motorboats to be seen and heard. We saw the usual Mallards and Canada Geese, Ring Billed Gulls. We also saw a few Caspian terns and surprisingly three Common loons calling back and forth to each other as we got down towards Wilmot Creek. The lake was just so peaceful and quiet that living in the moment was very easy, although we didn't quite make the sunset part of it! When we got some warm gentle rain it didn't even register with either of us that we should turn back.

Swallow nest cavities in the bluffs

Along the bluffs between Bowmanville and Wilmot Creek we saw at least seven colonies of Bank swallow nests. These swallows numbers are declining and just last week I had an email looking for input on swallow nesting colonies. I will have to go back prepared for doing a census in the next few weeks. As I said I don't need much persuasion to grab a paddle!

All things considered an afternoon that might have been a write off if we paid attention to the forecast turned into a great afternoon paddle! Get out there and enjoy the nature of Ontario!

The IceMan!

It has been well over a month since I last wrote anything here. When last I wrote I was speaking of Hiking trails in Ontario. Don't get me wrong I love to hike. However I like the seasons that we get in Ontario and even as I wrote that post I was looking forward to some of what Washington just got! Yes, snow! Snow, glorious snow. You can ski on it, snowshoe in it and it just seems to make the winter worthwhile. Well if you live in southern Ontario, I don't need to tell you, but the snowblowers have had an easy winter of it. I have had my shovel out once, before Christmas and we got about 4 inches of wet slush that promptly froze solid. Hardly a speck since then and most of what we had did melt. I say most because what is still here is now ice, and any trails that you attempt to hike are more along the lines of skating rinks. I took my boys out for a short jaunt to Stephen's Gulch Conservation Area today. It was nice to be out in the woods and it wasn't as bitter as it has been some days. However the trail conditions made me leary of the older one slipping and falling hard, on the trail, and the sled we got the litle one was sliding all over, as well. Jake seemed to think it was great fun, especially when his older brother was doing the pulling!

The trail was truly icy as the next photo of Isaiah shows. Something like YakTraks are a definite suggestion if you are out on the trails in this area at the moment.



On another outing earlier in the week we took a walk down the Bowmanville Creek valley and found a different sort of ice! At some point in the last few weeks the Bowmanville Creek has jammed up somewhere, perhaps under the 401 bridge, and flooded its banks. In doing so it deposited some huge ice chunks all over the forests beside the creek. The paved trail that follows the creek was quite impassable due to large areas of ice chunks jumbled together to make footing treacherous. It was however neat to look at and Isaiah liked playing at being a Polar Explorer. A few photos of the Bowmanville valley this week!!


Although the photos don't really show them some of these blocks are two feet thick and ten feet long. I wouldn't have wanted to be walking down this trail in the midst of the flood!
AND FINALLY here we have my own little version of support for all the athletes competing in the Olympics out in Vancouver this month. I know the Inuit wouldn't think much of my effort, but hey, the kids got a kick out of it, and that is what counts. Go Canada Go!!!

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Ontario's Hiking Trails

As you have read in my last post I am proposing a hiking trail along Wilmot Creek in the town of Clarington, On. For those of you who still like the old names, Clarington consists of Newcastle, Bowmanville, Courtice, Orono and numerous other small hamlets. In doing some research on trail development I was somewhat impressed by the number of hiking trails currently present, or in development in Ontario. It made me proud of those countless individuals who have given of their time and energy to build, and maintain these trails so that all of us can use them. I also felt thankful to all of those private landowners who were receptive to the vision of hiking trails and allow them to cross their lands.
This post is basically a rundown on some of the trails that are available to us Ontario hikers.
I will start with the best known, and the first, lengthy hiking trail developed in Ontario, the Bruce Trail. As I stated in the last post I was a child when the Bruce Trail was under development, as a Centennial project, and my father was one of the people recruited to bring the trail to fruition. The Bruce Trail was the brainchild of a man by the name of Ray Lowes, a metallurgist by trade, for Dofasco in Hamilton. On his free time he wandered the Niagara escarpment, hiking the trails that were present. He envisioned a trail stretching the length of the escarpment in Ontario, from Queenston Heights on the Niagara River, to Tobermory, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. In the beginning most of it was private land. With the trail project the escarpment was spotlighted and its signifigance became became recognized. The escarpment is now a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve and there have been many land acquisitions by various bodies so that much of it is permanently protected. The website for the Bruce Trail has all kinds of info for you to peruse.
The next trail I will talk about is the Ganaraska Trail. This trail runs from Port Hope on Lake Ontario, to north of Lake Simcoe and then west to Georgian Bay. A side trail links with the Bruce trail near Collingwood.
Sticking in the same geographic area a relatively new trail is the Oak Ridges Trail, which, surprisingly, follows the Oak Ridges Moraine from Rice Lake to Newmarket, just north of Toronto.
In Eastern Ontario the Rideau Trail runs from Kingston to Ottawa through Smith Falls and Perth.
In the Lake Superior region the Voyageur Trail runs Sault Ste Marie to Thunder Bay along some of the ruggedest terrain in Canada. Some of this trail is still undeveloped but there is over 500 km of hiking available!
In south central Ontario the Grand Valley Trail Asociation has developed a trail that runs along the Grand River from Rock Point, on Lake Erie, to the town of Alton, near Orangeville.

These are just the larger hiking trails in Ontario. There are numerous smaller trails that may take a few minutes to a few hours or even a few days to complete. for info on some of them check out Hike Ontario and the Ontario Trails Council.
For those of of us who love the outdoors, the beauty of these trails is that they are always open, in all seasons, in all weather and in most cases they are free to use. If you are into hiking at all you may want to buy a membership in the local association for the trail near you, and a guidebook is never a bad investment.
When you are out hiking on these trails take a moment to think about the men and women who have, and continue, to work hard to provide these trails for all of us. Respect the land and the users code. Say thanks to the many private landowners who unselfishly allow the trails to cross their properties.

Hiking is one activity that almost everyone can enjoy at some level. So take your sons and daughters for a hike. Maybe not today but someday they will thank you in some way for introducing them to the joy of the outdoors. If you have the chance, take someone who has never hiked before on a trail nearby. Once, someone probably did that for you.

To end his post, TAKE A HIKE, EH!

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Outdoor Skating Marathon?

OK, I know the water is still good for paddling, and I have been walking around in shirts, with running shoes on my feet. I am getting ahead of myself with this post but there is a method to my madness! Bear with me!


Last January I wrote a post about a skating Marathon that the town of Portland ON, hosted. Basically what they did was drive a Zamboni out onto the ice of the lake next to their town to create a skating track, and for the past six years, have had marathon races on the ice. Skaters of all levels could enter and try their hands(legs?) at skating races of various distances. This might be the nearest to the canals of Holland that most of us Canadians ever get. I should tell you right now that I have not participated in this event. Life gets in the way sometimes!

I grew up in the days of outdoor rinks and pond hockey. There were occasions when the streams flooded and froze and we could skate for miles on what were, normally, foot wide creeks, in what is now suburbs of Niagara Falls, ON. OK, I am showing my age. The point is that there isn't anything more 'Canadian' than skating outdoors on the frozen ponds and lakes. These days most of the kids in Southern Ontario have not seen the winters consistently cold enough to merit a backyard rink let alone to make the ice on the local lake, or pond safe enough. What the people of Portland did was put a bit of fun back into the Canadian winter.

One of the points that I made in last January's post was that other towns should copy the idea of Portland. I still think that if every town with the resources and a nearby suitable, safe body of ice were to do this we might soon see a whole circuit of skating races. For sure we would see a lot of simple outdoor family fun. If I lived in Toronto, and took the kids to a lake like Scugog, for example, for a day of outdoor skating, chances are I would take them to lunch and visit a few of the shops in the town as well. That was the gist of my post last winter.

Well this week I looked up the website for the Portland skating marathon and was sad to read that the volunteers that ran this event have decided to take this year off. I have to say I understand their point of view as volunteers. Six years is a long time and Portland is not a big town with a vast pool of volunteers to draw from.
However this leaves the same challenge out there for the small lakeside towns in southern Ontario looking for a way to draw in some tourist dollars in the coldest months of the winter.
I live in Bowmanville and we don't have a suitable lake next to us. Lake Ontario doesn't count! The nearest lake that would fit the bill is Lake Scugog and that is why I picked on Port Perry last year. I still think Port Perry should really look into this idea, but there are other towns with a lake beside them that could also do this.
And now here is the method to my madness. Now is the time for organizing. Get your town council moving and warm up the Zambonis. String the lights around the ice surface and lets get some outdoor skating going in southern Ontario again. As to the races, they would be the icing on the cake. Or might that be the icing on the ice!!

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