Tobermory 2006: Bruce Peninsula and Fathom Five

My mom visited me for a bit a couple of weekends ago. I took her on a tour of Bruce Peninsula National Park. Fathom Five National Marine Parks consists mostly of islands and shipwrecks, so we didn’t see much of Fathom Five aside from the Big Tub lighthouse and view of the islands from the Visitor’s Centre viewing tower. We visited the famous cave, the Grotto on the Georgian Bay; hiked the Singing Sands shoreline of Lake Huron; and went to Emmett Lake. The brand new visitor’s centre had their ‘soft’ opening, with construction still continuing, now open to the public. Mom got to see the fabulous video called “Life on the Edge” on the big screen with surround sound. By the way mom: closed captioning is on its way to being implemented in the movie. Always the advocate… hehe.

Amber and I have gotten well into our routine amphibian and reptile roadkill monitoring. Three times a week we patrol four roads with the van, but now we have started to monitor everyday for better estimates. We are doing this to get an estimate of the number of reptiles and amphibians killed on certain roads during the summer. Let’s just say, there will be lots. As the EMR team, we have been exploring potential new gestation sites for the Massasaugas. A gestation site is where a female rattler stays when she is gravid (pregnant), until after she gives birth. It’s like a den/area, where she can protect her young before they venture off on their own. As the warmer weather approaches, we will be starting earlier (probably 6am on some days).

One Wednesday, I spent the day hiking with other colleagues, setting up bear bait stations. Essentially, these are timber sticks that have been nailed onto trees 1km apart (we did 16 that day), just out of reach of a human since a black bear is about the same height as a human. At each station we drizzled sardine juice (that’s smelly stuff!) from half opened sardine cans onto the trees for the scent to waft in the breeze (to attract the bears), and hung the containers on a string from the stick. The following week, the bear crew went to those stations and observed if a bear had visited (you can tell by claw marks on the trees, and the chewed up sardine cans). It was a different experience and fun to spend the day hiking too!

Jenny and I went on a ride called “Canter for the Cure” on Sunday, which was done in support of breast cancer research. However, it was not Melody whom I rode. She managed to throw a shoe the night before, so I ended up taking a little 14.2h Appaloosa gelding named Tom - he was a good boy, yet it felt strange to be riding something so different than Melody. It was a beautiful day for our 6hr ride around Hope Bay (near Wiarton, 30 min drive from the barn). Part of the ride was on the Bruce Trail. The scenery changed from farmland to alvars, Niagara escarpment, Glacier Potholes, open fields. One of those huge fields had cows, not to mention the huge bull who nearly charged at some of the horses! There were about twenty horses on the ride and it turns out that the woman who started it is Amber’s aunt! That’s the thing about small towns… people are connected one way or another.