Kayaking on George Lake Killarney PP

Cooling off after difficult hike Georgian Bay Killarney

Can you see the moose?  Still learning how link all this up.  This is at Rabbit Blanket. Can't get the photos to go in the right order.  You will just have to read the captions.

Campsite at Rabbit Blanket

Neys on Lake Superior

We walked two trails yesterday in bright beautiful sunshine.  One took us across the white beach sands and dunes across Prisoner’s Bay* introducing us to beach peas and other dune plants.  We have been taking a lot of pictures of wild flowers as you will see, hopefully you will see them.  The other “rugged” trail was called “Under the Volcano” and even though the writers of park pamphlet called it challenging we found it easier than the trails at Killarney, but maybe that was because we had walking sticks this time! The trail had interpretative panels across the flows or shields and took us across a across a tundra-like landscape which is uniquely geological and geomorphic for this area. (Someone send this to Gil Hansen-he’d love this place.)   One billion years ago a volcano erupted and then its dome collapsed and sealed it up. 

Washed up on the sands is so many tiny pieces of broken drift wood that I am decorating a recycled Coffee Mate can, making a drum for Matt and Mary’s children to play at the jam session after the wedding. Ben and Kelsey are getting a cairn (hoodoo in America’s SW) craft to burn candles on.

Beach at Neys

Blessings here- there are fewer mosquitoes on this breezy cold shore.  People fish the lake, hike and sea kayak. The waves are very high on Lake Superior so we won’t try that, we will stick to small lakes like George and Rabbit Blanket. There is the Little Pic River nearby but we found by tandeming (made-up word for biking on the tandem) it was a little too far away for us to drag the kayak.

Hiking at Killarney Lake Huron

*History of Neys is also interesting (I keep collecting stories along the Wayfarin Journey, thinking one day I will get those mysteries and children stories written.)  Neys started out as a German Prisoner of War Camp during WWII. One of the reasons the area was chosen was because it was close to the Railroad.  Pat said the first night you might hear the trains, but all I heard was the waves hitting the shore.  The next two days I listened for the train because as I told him in the early morning I loved hearing the train whistle into the station at Stony Brook. I think except for the deep cold and starkness of winter this might not have been the worst place to be in a POW camp because the Canadians did their very best to adhere to Geneva rules and it is beautiful here, but of course being deprived of your freedom no matter what is bleakness deeper than the coldest cold. This is one of the best stories:  “The Great Escape”: One POW made skates out of his bed in an attempt to skate across Lake Superior  not realizing it rarely freezes totally over and so had to turn around and give himself up.  They have photos in the Visitor Center of the war years and the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the ship that sunk in 1975.  Pat is going to write more about it later. A sad part of Neys history is like ours: Japanese-Canadians interned during the war were separated from their families and lost the properties they owned. Neys acted as a relocation facility for those displaced individuals, but how could you ever make up for their loses?   I like learning the history of the parks, you know friends, because it makes us realize all humanity and life is also connected.

Trying to fix the kite with drift wood.

everyone interested in our sweat shirts.

volcano dome