Last Sunday's Skiing

Here's just a bit more about last Sunday's skiing. We took the ski bus from Burlington, Ontario up to an area near the Georgian Bay. See the map for the approximate locations of where we live and the ski area we went to. I also marked Niagara Falls just for additional information. The Georgian Bay is part of Lake Huron. (The map is one of Google's satellite photomaps.)



The photo below is the view from the ski area looking north over the Georgian Bay. The ski area is on top of the Niagara Escarpment so it's about 100 m (300 ft.) above the bay. There are many downhill ski runs in the area but the cross-country ski area is mostly on the top of the escarpment.



Below is Églantine coming down a small hill on the cross-country trail.



During the summer, there is a treetop walk at this location. You can see the catwalk high in the trees above the ski trail.



No, we haven't! (There is a slightly larger view of the treetop walk on my Flickr site.)

A Gift from Églantine

Catching up a bit

Busy here as usual. We had snow on Saturday. The runners group that I belong to thinks there is a plot by the weatherpeople as we had fairly warm weather all week and then on the day of our long run we had fresh, skippery, slushy snow. A 16 km (10 mile) run is enough work for me without slipping and sliding.



Yesterday, Églantine and I went out with our cross-country ski club to ski. It was too warm for my liking but we enjoyed the views of fresh sticky snow on the trees and the sun was out for half the day which made it all even better.



This morning, Monday, the temperature was above freezing again and the snow was starting to melt. When we went out to do our dog walk with Calla this morning, all the trails on the property were full of tracks. Here was the best track photo of the day by Églantine. It's a single close-up shot of a wild turkey track. The tracks were very far apart and soon disappeared so I think that perhaps a fox was giving chase as there were fox tracks in the area going the same direction.



In addition to turkey and fox tracks, we saw deer, squirrel, rabbit, and coyote tracks that we could identify and tracks of two small animals, mice or voles, and other bird tracks in the snow as well as our dog and cats and ourselves. Perhaps I will have time to make a track collage later this week.

Sun at Last

At last we have sunshine. This is the first day of 2006 that we've had sunshine in the morning. Other days we've had a few seconds of the sun almost showing through the clouds on maybe two occasions.



Catching the light of the sun, here are a few snow crystals that landed on newly frozen ice.

Winter Flower Remains

This is all that's left of a Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) that bloomed until late fall.