The sandy beach stretched out on either side, littered with windrows of white shells. The water was clear and still, mirroring the grey clouds hanging low in the sky. Sea gulls swooped and soared, mournful cries loud in the silence. Instead of palm trees, pines and cedars clung to the sandy soil and the air was a less than balmy eight degrees. While I had gone south to avoid the damaged trails from the ice storm, it was less tropical than I would have liked, though the natural beauty here has its own wonder.
Sandbanks Provincial Park is found in picturesque Prince Edward County on Lake Ontario. The Park opened today for the season, despite the website insisting it is closed. Perhaps that is why the park was unusually devoid of tourists, providing ample opportunities to explore. There are three beaches stretching across the park, which are considered some of the best in Canada, though fans of Wasaga Beach would probably like to argue otherwise. On this cool day the beach was empty except for zebra mussel shells, green sea glass and….a spine. Small, measuring about a foot and a half, but most definitely the spine of a mammal. A spine that my collector daughter was interested in taking home. No, no, nope. Instead she would have to be content with the green sea glass.
Numerous hiking trails crisscross the park, from short two to three kilometer loops to the longest trail at thirteen kilometers. Feel free to just explore the beach, or head inland to the multiple woodland and forests trails. Boardwalks and occasional stairs make the routes easy to travel, though some of the older bridges have twisted with age, providing some comic relief as you attempt to walk straight and feeling like you have been imbibing some of that famous regional wine. Under deep red fallen cedars hide small red backed and blue speckled salamanders, stuporous with the cool weather. Blue birds twittered in the dense brush where trees had previous fallen and formed an open glade. Sandbanks Park juts into Lake Ontario, making it popular route for migrating birds and birdwatchers alike.
It was the odor, pungent and musky, that caused me to pause. We had left the trail for short distance to identify fungi and mushrooms, and as soon as I smelled it my own hackles went up. A look around confirmed that we were much too close to an animal den, a raised area of dirt and scuffed earth next to the river. Bones of small animals and the feathers of birds littered the ground, and grey scat consisting of fur and bones confirmed that this was a hunter’s domain. I had my daughter back up until we were back on the trail, and continued on our way with a sense of heightened alertness until we were well away from this area.
Further on a white exoskeleton caught our eye, sitting atop a ragged stump. The phone app I use to identify flora and fauna provided remarkable information. Zombies are real. This poor millipede had been infected by the zombie fungus arthrophaga myriapodina that takes over the insect while instructing it to travel to a high area, where the fungus forcible ejects spores out of the carcass. Eww. Nature is remarkable and scary.
Off in the distance stretched the infamous sand dunes, some rising as high as twenty-five feet, undulating crests topped with tufts of green shore grass. These shifting dunes stretch twelve kilometers along the lake, formed by the longshore currents running at an angle to the land, and further sculpted by the winds. Sandbanks is the largest freshwater dune formation in the world, another fantastic reason to explore Canada this summer.