Killarny to Superior OR Rocks and Trees

The next day, we went on a hike on Chikanishing Trail, which gave us some great views of Gerogian bay, and demonstrated perfectly the rocks and windblown pines in the area.

Me (without a camera in my hand for once, but only cause I lent it to Mike) with the Cloche mountains in the background

A hawk (possibly a Broad winged, or maybe a Coopers?) I chased down in the woods

Looking back at these photos, it reminds me of an Arrogant Worms song about Canada that we heard on the radio driving up to Superior called "Rocks and Trees"

"Although we don't have history

Gold medal winning teams

Heroes or prisoners

World famous volcanoes

Still what we've got's glorious

'Cause we've got Rocks and trees

And trees and rocks

And rocks and trees

And trees and rocks

And rocks and trees

And trees and rocks

And rocks and trees

And trees and rocks

And water"

True that.

Lake Superior Camping trip, day 1 Killarny Prov. Park

Hello all,

Finally, another opportunity for some great photos! Its been a while. Mike and I went on a week camping trip around the East side of Lake superior. Our first stop was Killarny provincial park. We left TO around lunchtime and arrived there in the evening, with enough time to set up the tent and head to the lighthouse to see the sunset. The scenery was beatiful and the light was perfect for a few good shots. Here is one of Mike enjoying the lake

I like the way the water in amongst the rocks reflected the sky so nicely

A gull gives me a fly by

The suns angle was perfect for this shot, making the rock looked like windblown sand

The sunset that evening was nice, but was over very quickly

I will post the hike at Killarny tomorrow

Snowbirds out my window

Well,

I discovered one good thing about living in the city, Snowbird practice. For the labour day weekend at the CNE the Snowbirds are doing an airshow, and this morning they were practicing above the city, so I got out the long lens to play. Watching them was very cool, but made me feel kinda sick.

I like the twists in the clouds

This was completely by accident, on my part, not the Snowbirds Im sure.

This is my favorite one, you can see the clouds in the upper part of the photo where they had done the same maneuver a few minutes ago (giving me time to get the camera)

Tough Parenting

Hey all,

Here is a nice little sequence of photos I captured of a Chipping Sparrow fledgling and a parent. It was on the ground chipping away, begging for food

The female parent returned with a small moth, which was guzzled quickly, and of course the fledgling still wanted more.

When it realized it wasnt going to get anything else with this trip

It did a nice wrestling move on its mother. Parenting is difficult for birds apparently

a decent shot of the gaping maw

Return to nature

Hello all,

I'm sorry that I have not recently updated this blog, sitting in my apartment looking at the classifieds does not help my creativity. But, I spent a few days up in Bracebridge so I was able to wander around getting a few photos. Its always nice to get back to the nature that Toronto doesn't provide (unless by nature you mean the very interesting crazies that live here).

Heres a pretty good one of a toad I found in the woods. After the fact, I was pretty angry at myself for not seeing the leaf in the foreground that gives the right hand corner a greenish blur. But hey, Im learning, and maybe you wouldn't have even noticed had I not pointed it out.

Similar to the Chipmunk photo posted earlier, I think this is a text book picture of a Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus). It froze in terror for a few minutes, which allowed me to play with the settings on my camera

A damselfly, I wish I could have brought out the colours in the eyes a little more, they are bright blue (if you cant tell in the photo)

Tomorrow I will post a nice sequence of a sparrow fledgling I found that was putting its mom to work.

Ultimate Frisbee Nationals

Yesterday, My husband and I headed to the Ultimate frisbee National Champs at Sunnybrook Park in Toronto. My two cousins from Vancouver were on two teams from BC, so we came out to show some family support. I had fun playing with my 70-300 lense and catching some of the action on the field. Enjoy

My cousin Julie's team was called Backbone, here they are in the first game we watched

Pretty serious stuff

My cousin Julie, waiting for the kick(flick?)-off.

My cousin Jordan, team "Vortex", in her game

A sliding catch

We also got to watch some of the other games going on, some of the mens teams were pretty crazy

I took some time to watch "Furious George", a very impressive mens team

Julie in the semifinals

Backbone lines up

Backbone won their semifinal game, to play in the finals against "Dirt", a team from Toronto. It was a awesome game (despite all the foul calls).

Those frisbee shorts give bad wedgies apparently

The game was awesome! It was 9-13, Dirt only had to score one more goal to win, I was down on the field and they were totally sure they were going to win. But Backbone fought back, made some awesome plays and scored 5 points in a row to win the game! The best comeback ever! Congratulations on a great game Backbone!

Hot in this apartment?

The past few weeks after Gaspe have been nothing but job searches (if any of you know anyone that needs 1) A PhD student to work on vector-borne diseases or 2) A vector biologist, please..let me know :) ) . I haven't had the camera out much (nothing but smog in Toronto anyway!) but I busted it out today to convey the stuffy hotness that is our apartment, as demonstrated by my cat, Sphingidae. She's still alive, I promise.

Mont Albert and the end

The next morning, we were treated to the best weather we could possibly imagine for the climb up Mont Albert (except later in the afternoon, it rained, but whatever). The climb was rated as being for those in good physical condition and between 6-8hrs long:we were in for quite a ride. I got a fair number of photos, and I don't think Ill post them all here, remember you can see all my photos at www.flickr.com/photos/biting_flies, take a look!!

There were quite a few streams rushing down the sides of the mountain

Well, we'll skip right to the top of Mont Albert, since it came rather quickly in comparison to the rest of the climb back down. It was perfect weather for grabbing a few photos, with nice clouds and blue skies. The top was very rocky, and kind of tundra-like

The climb down was a whole different story. We did a loop, which was a great idea because we got to see the other side of the mountain (which, despite what any bear may say, was totally worth the climb up). We followed this path along to the edge, and then down we went.

The boardwalk through the trees was very cool, all the trees are stunted

And then came the rocks, and they would keep coming for the next 2-3 km

We were high enough that there was still snow on the peaks

This is one of my favorite photos from the trip, I think I've managed to capture gravity quite well. Thanks to Erin for climbing out on the snow!

This was a woman making her way down the slope with walking sticks. I was quite impressed at the number of people attempting this climb, by this point in the trip I was starting to question my climbing abilities (and the integrity of my knees).

For those of you non-french speaking folk, this sign says "the descent down this slope if very long and very difficult"

Pardon my French, but no shit.

Alex makes his way down

I love the colours in this one

This photo was around the bottom of the slope, from here we still had 6km to go. And here comes the rain.


The rest of the hike was rocky at times, and other times very muddy. All told, it took us 7 hrs for a 17km hike. We all felt it the next day. There are plenty of other trails around the park with lesser difficulties. It was a great place to visit, hike and camp in and I hope to go back there again.

The next day involved biking through the rest of the park and back to St Anne du Monts to pick up the other car. We packed up and started the long drive back home. By this point I was too tired to take more pictures, so Ill end the blog story here. It was an tiring experience, but one well worth the energy. If you ever get a chance to go to the Gaspe peninsula, your in for a treat. The people are friendly, the food is good, and the scenery is great (when its not raining, I think we just had bad luck with that). Thanks for reading everyone!