Killarney Provincial Park - Day 1

This past week my friend, Rudy Neufeld, and I enjoyed 3 days of hiking in Killarney Provincial Park near Georgian Bay in northern Ontario. The weather guessers had predicted rain for much of the time we planned to be there but, thankfully, they were completely wrong - we had no rain at all and 1 very good day and two excellent couldn't be better days! And, if you luck out with the weather, this is definitely the time of year to visit this spectacular part of the province - cool temperatures, no bugs and amazing fall colours to complement the awesome natural beauty!

We began the venture Sunday in Sudbury with a very enjoyable afternoon and evening visit with my grandson, Drew Marr, and great granddaughter, Julia, before moving on to the park early Monday morning.

On our drive into the park we stopped once to attempt to capture a bit of the brilliant colours along the road. (Click on any photo to view a larger image.)

As this was our first and shortest day we decided to hike the Cranberry Bog trail - a 4 Km trail described as "Moderate".

One of the things we discovered was that descriptions for the trails that we hiked tended to understate the degree of difficulty and the time required to complete the hike, at least for 2 reasonably fit guys in their 70's.

For example, the time suggested to complete the 4 Km Cranberry Bog trail is 2 1/2 hours - at that pace one would have little time for taking photos and enjoying the ambiance of the trail, and there was plenty to enjoy, especially with the fall colours at this time of year. (Contrary to what you might think, I did not put those red leaves there.)

The Cranberry Bog trail is in the southern part of the park and the precambrian rock in this area tends to be granite which it seems contains feldspar and it is this material which gives the rock its strikingly pink colour.

More of this pink rock appears again on the George Island wilderness hike that we covered on our 3rd and last day in the park (photos in a later blog post). And the pink is even more striking when compared to the white quartzite of La Cloche and the Killarney Ridge which we experienced on Day 2.

Unfortunately, the photos do not really do justice to the natural beauty of this or any areas of the park that we visited.

This is the largest wetland area that we saw on this 4 Km walk.

If you look closely you will find Rudy surveying the scene while standing near the A.Y. Jackson-like pine.

The terrain on this trail was not all rock, bogs, marshes and swamps (and beaver dams and lodges) but included abundant woodland areas replete with a variety of woodland plants including an array of ferns and trees with the accompanying web of surface roots to negotiate.

Nearing the end of the trail we came on a second fairly large body of water, again with pink rocks around the shoreline.

I think we completed this trail in about 4 hour having taken lots of time to enjoy the scenery and to take photos and rest breaks.

Then off to register for our B&B at the Killarney Mountain Lodge and to consider our plans for Day 2, about which more in the next blog post.