Friday the 13th

 

Although it is not until the first weekend in November, the Sailors Night flags have arrived and in sorting them I found that we were missing a set. Hopefully the replacements will get here in time.

I think George and I attended Friday the 13th in Port Dover just once. It is an event that most Doverites avoid as the traffic is snarled and the town is very crowded with the bikers and the people here to see the bikes.

I tried to drive into town but Hwy 6 was plugged so I drove down a side street and parked at the top of Brant Hill to walk in.

Bikes are no longer parked on the main street, so they were parked all over the place.

Plenty of police around;

directing traffic and keeping an eye on things.

Main street was for pedestrians only and was packed,

vendors lined the street selling all manner

of bike related stuff,

with an emphasis on skulls,

and gruesomeness.

No idea what their story is!

Walking back down I focused more on the bikes

and their artwork

and accessories.

Patios and bars were full with the sound of live music coming from every direction.

The weather cooperated with the rain holding off until the evening.

A last look up Main St and I walked across the bridge and back to my car.

Kawartha cottage final days

 

We checked out another lock

on the Trent-Severn system,

this time at Buckhorn where we went for batteries (for the star tracker), groceries, wine and a bathing suit for Rick. When packing he had never imagined it would be this warm.

Warm enough for me to swim on a few days

and for Rick to wade.

Both of us decided we preferred kayaking to canoeing and one day we kayaked all the way up the lake and let the wind gently push us home.

That, along with our morning walks, constituted our exercise.

I was inspired by the fall colours

to paint.

Rick was able to get some lovely night sky photos

and some astrophotography. Andromeda.

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.

Kawartha relaxation

 It didn't take long for our days to settle into a relaxing routine. Wake to the sunny view of the deck and the lake, 

first cup of coffee sitting on the couch looking out through the big picture window,

sometimes the second cup is out on the deck, with the lake reflecting like a mirror.

After breakfast. a walk up the cottage road where we saw a Grouse one morning

Having canoed the first day, we took the kayaks out the next day.

cruising past the cottages along the shore and through the islands on the lake.

Up to the Trent Severn channel markers

and to the entrance of Lock 28 at Burleigh Falls. There is no longer a lock 29 as two locks were replaced by one.

On the way back it became obvious that a large power boat that we had thought had anchored in the shallows, had actually run aground, and was waiting to be towed off. There are lots of barely submerged rocks, luckily the kayaks glide over them.

We kayaked for a couple of hours, too long for our first time out, and were quite sore. Very happy to see the cottage

and the neighbouring marsh.

Later, on our way to Lakefield for groceries, we stopped and

watched the lock in use.

Later, after the mandatory trip to the bakery,

we took a look at the falls that the Lock bypasses.