Friday July 9

Friday morning it was still raining. For those of you who have campers and know the sound of rain on your roof, suffice it to say we did not crawl out of bed early. When we did get up, we both did a few maintenance things around the trailer. It had stopped raining, and I was working on my computer, and looked up and saw two pileated woodpeckers in our site! These extremely large woodpeckers are normally quite shy, and we had no campers near us. They look practically prehistoric, a lot like “Woody”.

Our Pileateds

Click on any picture to make it bigger

They landed on a stump the park had thankfully left in


our site, and began their usual process of tearing it apart looking for insects. They stayed for several minutes, and gave me ample picture taking opportunities. If you know this bird, you’ll note they are a male, and female. We talked with a ranger about them later, and he said they are relatively rare in the park, especially a pair. He said they would probably return to feed their young later.

In the afternoon ,we went on our favorite hike in the park, The “Spruce Bog Boardwalk”. It is about a mile in length, and winds through two separate bogs. Bogs in the park are areas where little fresh water enters the area, streams are slow, or nonexistent. The water can become quite acidic, and has little or no oxygen. So the plants are unique to these areas.

Stream, Bog, coming Spruce, Mature Forest

Bogs usually begin in a depression, and organic matter from the water dies and builds up on the bottom over millions of years. It forms a mat where moss, ferns and other acid loving plants can thrive. Anything else that falls into it, such as tree trunks, are preserved because there is so little oxygen. There are usually a couple of interesting things happening. Occasionally a beaver will arrive, and proceed to dam up the stream to create his habitat. This raises the water level, and causes any black spruce, the major tree species in bogs, to drown, and die off. Eventually the beavers leave, the water level recedes and the spruce come back.

Black Spruce moving in on the bog

The thing we appreciate about Algonquin’s ranger staff is their attitude about nature. They do not look at these places as a museum, to be preserved exactly as it was at some point in time. They do act as interpreters of the dynamic forces at play, how each species impacts and changes the environment, including man. They do not want to see the park abused, but they do want to see it used, all the while recognizing it is going to change over the years, because everything does. We’ve been many places where the effort is to “preserve” nature in a constant state. Despite the fact the park has built this boardwalk over this damp soft mushy bog, should beavers move in tomorrow, the staff would make no attempt to move them. They likewise let the spruce trees move in knowing that if they continue they could become a forest, and the spruce bog boardwalk would have to move.

Because it had just rained that morning, the mushrooms were coming out, and the forest wildflowers were in bloom. I got fascinated with orange mushrooms.

Liz kept finding wildflowers, and ferns.

The speaker for the evening was Becky Mason, the daughter of the late canoeist and filmmaker Bill Mason. Bill was well respected by canoeists, and made numerous films of his trips in Algonquin, the boundary waters and other canoeing grounds. Unfortunately, Becky had developed Lyme disease, and could not come, but she sent some interesting DVDs of canoeing. One was “Dougie does the Pet”, a film of a canoeist and his 4 year old son, doing one of Algonquin’s better known white water rivers the Petawaba. Another was a film of these crazy guys, and their custom canoes going over some insane rapids in upstate NY. The last was Becky, who is a canoe instructor, artist, and speaker demonstrating some solo canoe stokes and talking about canoeing. I’m sure lot’s of you are ready to stop reading now, but the evening was very relaxing and enjoyable.

The canoe talk will continue tomorrow when we present “Bruce and Liz retrace their honeymoon”!