A Day Off after Some Exploring

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday exploring the countryside within about 30 miles of this little town of Wiarton. This is all of downtown Wiarton as seen on our return on one of our outings. Small, but it has everything you need. There’s even a hospital in town. Hopefully we won’t need that.

Tuesday we drove back a half mile into the Spirit Rock Conservation Area on this one lane road. We were surprised to find a parking lot and about 6 cars at the end.

A group of people were having a picnic in this meadow when we got there. We let them enjoy the sunshine and flowers.

We took the path back to The Corran, the ruins of a mansion built in 1898.

After walking around the little that was left of this once great house…

we walked down the Bruce Trail towards the bay and the edge of the Niagara Escarpment.

The trail goes down a spiral staircase here!

We chose to take the side trail on the top of the cliff.

Unfortunately, most of the overlooks were fairly overgrown.

This is the best look we got of Colpoy’s Bay.

The fascinating rocks…

and beautiful lady slippers orchids more than made up for it.

Wednesday we visited two Provincial Parks. The first was Sauble Falls, where some short trails…

gave views..

of this pretty little falls.

It was a historic site, but the only structure left was this bridge built in 1930.

We drove up the west side of the peninsula to Black Creek Provincial Park. It was pretty much this beach.

At the other end of the beach was the creek, but no trail back to the beaver swamp. I really wanted to see a beaver.

Our last stop was Lion’s Head. We were looking for the lighthouse. We found it, but they charge to park everywhere in the little town, so we literally just stopped and I got out to take a few photos. Of the bay…

and the Lion’s Head.

When we got back Matey suddenly couldn’t stand right. We took him to a nearby vet. She thought he had an inner ear disorder of unknown cause. Really, it’s an official thing in dogs and has an official name. It may go away on its own or it may not. Today Matey spent most of the day in the stroller, we walked and he watched and that wore him out and he slept. It was so sudden; it’s scary.