Petroglyphs

 Rather than our morning, cottage road, walk, we headed off , about half an hour, to the Petroglyphs Provincial Park.

Parked in the "Seniors Parking" which was a little closer to the Visitors Centre than the main parking and walked to "The Learning Centre" which had a walk through area with lots of written material,

video and audio story telling and

graphics of the Indigenous symbolism. Although usually I love this, I wasn't in the mood, and walked through to follow the path to the Petroglyphs.

I was here in 1972 or 3, with a school orienteering class. We canoed, camped and walked to the Petroglyphs. I remember them as being open to the air and we were able to walk on the stone and examine the carvings, running our hands along the indentations and all that we knew was that they were Aboriginal and ancient. Now they are covered in an industrial looking building and you walk around the stone on a raised path. You are not allowed to take pictures so the ones included here are from the booklet provided.

I asked permission of the attendant and she said it was fine to take a picture of the plaque. The stone is referred to as "marble" but she indicated that it was "sandstone" and carvable using a harder stone to chip it away.

The building was erected in 1984 to prevent further deterioration of the carvings. Oral history of the Algonkian speaking people (Algonquin, Cree, Blackfoot, Mi'kmaq, Odawa and Ojibwe/Chippewa) indicates some are as old as 6000 years.

It is hard to see some of the images depicted on this map but some were enhanced by colouring them in with black wax crayon by an archeologist (without the local Indigenous communities permission!). Evening programs light the site from the side making some stand out better.

Photo taken from an Ontario Government Parks site.

We walked on the raised path around the stone, pointing out the animals, canoes, snakes and symbols we could not identify and had the opportunity to talk to the attendant again who said that when she was a child she was bought here, as it is a sacred place, and heard the trickling water below that stone that was believed to be messages from the spirit world and may have been why the carvings were done here.

The park also has hiking trails so we decided to take the Nanabush Trail, 5.5km

Clematis Virginia seed heads (native). It was a moderately easy trail:

with boardwalks

through marshy areas

and some rough up and downs over exposed tree roots.

Did some internet research and I think this tree is infested with Woolly Aphids.

I didn't realize that Silver Birch had such lovely red wood underneath the bark.

 We didn't complete the trail, probably did about 4km, as it was getting quite hot and muggy. My watch indicated 9,600 steps, that's enough for me on a hot day.

Back to Lovesick Lake to relax for the rest of the day.

Rick is loving these clear, warm, cloudless nights with very little light pollution for his astrophotography. So often the crystal clear nights occur in the winter. However it hasn't all gone smoothly. Fumbling around in the dark with sensitive equipment lit by a small red flashlight isn't easy. The first night he accidentally switched the camera to video and the second night he switched the tracker to the southern hemisphere. It can only improve.