Point Pelee National Park, Canada

Sunday
This morning we drove up to Detroit (about 4 hours drive) to take Laura to her summer mission program with Central Detroit Christian, helping to run a summer camp for inner city kids. There are six interns altogether, and they are supposed to be living in a house recently bought by CDC in the area which they're serving, for the purpose of housing their interns. However, it was what you might call a "fixer upper", and it isnt quite finished yet, so they're just in temporary accommodation to start with. We were to drop her off at the house of one of the CDC staff members, which we did at about 1 pm. While looking at Google maps on the computer, Roger had noticed a big green "splodge" on the map in southern Canada, not too far away from Detroit, which with further investigation turned out to be Point Pelee National Park - Canada's smallest National Park. We decided it would make a good destination for the rest of the day. It consists of a peninsula of land, mainly of marsh and woodland habitats, that tapers to a sharp point as it extends into Lake Erie. This spit of land is formed of glacial sand, silt and gravel and is the southernmost point of mainland Canada. It is slightly more than seven kilometers long by 4.5 kilometers wide at its northern base. As we were driving through the countryside to get there we started noticing a lot of downed trees, cut into sections, then we began to notice quite a number of houses with tarpaulins covering part or all of their roofs. Its a great tomato growing area, with quite a lot of extensive greenhouses, and several of those were smashed. It turns out they had a tornado pass through only last week. Fortunately nobody was hurt (it went through during the night), but there was a lot of damage.
This shot was taken from the top of an observation tower and shows the boardwalk extending out into the marsh, and the waterway that people were canoeing on. Its obviously a haven for bird life, particularly during the migration season. It was particularly a haven on this day for red-winged blackbirds - I have never seen so many in one place, and there were many swallows darting around and skimming over the water. It would obviously have been nice to have more time there, but we enjoyed the time we had, walking the boardwalk trail and another shorter trail as well as checking out a couple of the beach areas, and watching the changing sky and the light effects on the water. Then we drove back to the Detroit area and had dinner at a lovely waterfront restaurant where you could see some of the big ships in the distance. We are actually staying up in Detroit area until Tuesday, as Roger has some business to do nearby on Monday and Tuesday morning.

Check it out in large.

One year ago: Country chapel