Frankie and I spent Memorial Day weekend at the Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario. We met Mary and Keith for a long weekend of camping, hiking, and playing in the sand along the shores of Lake Huron. Mary and Keith have been coming here for many years, often staying a week or more. This is the third year in a row Frankie and I have joined the fun and it's starting to feel like a tradition, which is just a terrific feeling. Yay for outdoor adventure traditions!
In 2015, during our first visit to the Pinery, we hiked the Heritage, Bittersweet, Hickory, and Carolinian Trails, which Mary and Keith had selected for us as being among their favorites. We liked them so much that we hiked the exact same set of trails last year. This year we decided to branch out and explore some new trails, which was exciting, but also meant we didn't have time to revisit all our old favorites. Over the course of the weekend, we hiked the Riverside, Wilderness, Cedar, and Carolinian Trails. Next year I hope to do a different combination of old and new trails.
We selected the Riverside Trail first, in part because the boardwalk was recently greatly expanded, so it would be "new" for all of us. Plus, the Riverside Trail is apparently quite buggy some years, but Mary and Keith reported seeing very few mosquitos or other biting insects so far this trip, making it a too good an opportunity to pass up. I literally saw one mosquito all weekend. (It was awesome). The Riverside Trail is short, just 1.0 km (0.6 miles). It is very charming, and definitely worth exploring. The entire portion along the Old Ausable Channel is now a boardwalk, from which we saw fish, frogs, and turtles.
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| bastard toadflax (Comandra umbellata) |
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| the Old Ausable Channel |
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| new boardwalk |
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| see the frog? |
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| nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) |
The parking area for the Riverside Trail is along a 14-kilometer one-way park road, so we decided to be strategic and hit another new trail along that drive in the afternoon, and explore other areas of the park on Sunday and Monday -- that way we could avoid driving the loop multiple times. But before embarking on the Wilderness Trail, we stopped for lunch at one of the many scenic picnic areas along the channel.
Once we'd properly fueled for our afternoon hike, we drove a bit further to the parking area for the Wilderness Trail. At 2.6 kilometers (1.6 miles), the Wilderness Trail is a bit longer, and meanders through mature pine and oak forest. Without the distraction of the river, it is easier to move along at a decent clip, although we of course found plenty of other diversions along the way. The trailhead sign suggested looking for evidence of a tornado that touched down along the trail in 2014, and that was terribly exciting for Frankie, who has a great interest in meteorology.
The trail eventually pops out onto a boardwalk over the dunes, with a viewing platform and stairs to the beach. We poked around a bit, enjoying the look at Lake Huron, but didn't linger too long. We had our own private beach waiting for us back at the campsite, complete with the allure of water balloons, which Mary had brought as a surprise for Frankie. This is the kid who solemnly came to me one day while reading Calvin and Hobbes, and said, ever so earnestly, I need to learn more about water balloons. He was over the moon to finally get to play with some himself and not just read about. So after the brief stop at the lakeshore, we hightailed it back, covering the rest of the Wilderness Trail quickly, and headed back to camp to play.
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| wild honeysuckle (Lonicera dioica) |
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| balsam ragwort (Packera paupercula) |
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| Lake Huron from the viewing platform |
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| this photo really shows how the grass protects the dunes -- look at those roots! |
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| climbing on blowdown from the 2014 tornado |
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