It was "Visit the Provincial Parks Free Day" so we headed for Voyageur Prov Park on the Quebec/Ontario border at Highway 417. We hadn't been there before. It is a large, well maintained park with three styles of campsites. Two of which were very attractive (the third, the trailer sites, were cheek by jowl)
The Park has three walking trails and three beaches. We walked one full trail and part of another.
It seems many places have their glacial erratic, this Park included. Dropped by a glacier at the end of the last ice age, this was one of the small ones I've seen, but it certainly stood out in the forest landscape.
One of the cedar trees had an immense (root?) ball at its base. Another had been well peckered by woodpeckers.
The walk through the woods took us by many plants, flowers, berries. Including some elecampane a flower I had not seen for 20 years. (Scroll over for ID)_
Clintonia
Arrowhead
Indian pipe
Canada mayflower
common agrimony
elencampagne
purple loosestrife
black-eyed susans
joe pye weed
fleabane and purple loosestrife
dill
maidenhair fern
A great blue heron fly overhead in the distance with its mouth wide open for the entire flight. Perhaps trying to cool off?
A family of blue jays with 2-3 "kids" were making quite a racket
A blue dasher dragonfly and a damselfly shared a small branch
Several different fungii were growing
A plant I had not heard of before is quite a problem at the Park. Voyageur Prov Park is one of the few place that has invasive European Water Chestnuts. Given a chance to spread it will choke out many of the native plants and close down the beaches as it's seeds have sharp spikes. (Not my photos)
For more information see the Park Blog:
There are 15 staff hired to deal with the plant, either from within the water wearing hip-waders, or by boat with a specially designed rake that gathers the plant. The workers in hip-waders are in the back of the lefthand photo.
