Monday, June 23, 2008
Durand Eastman Park trail map (PDF)
Ann got out of work a bit early and the weather forecast wasn't entirely clear, with the possibility of thunderstorms... so we abandoned plans to go paddling and headed over to Durand Eastman Park instead. We'd hiked there very briefly back in March, until Ann got a fairly nasty nosebleed and we had to head back home, so today I was hoping to get to see a few more of the trails.
We started with a quick visit to the beach along the shore of Lake Ontario... unfortunately the water levels were high and we couldn't walk very far without ending up in the water. So we headed across the road and hit the trail around Eastman Lake, since it looked like there was a sizeable crowd of kids partying over by Durand Lake.
I really enjoyed the trails around the lake, except for one major aggravation - apparently this is a popular place for people to walk their dogs, and many of them don't see the need to obey leash laws. So we had several instances of dogs rushing up to us or by us, and their idiot owners calling for them to behave. Personally I like dogs, but when they're out in public they should be on a leash!
As we walked around the lake, we spotted a variety of wildlife - swans, ducks, herons, frogs... what a great place!
Eventually we rounded the far end of the lake and after a brief walk along the edge of the golf course, ended up on the much more overgrown trail along the opposite shore. On the plus side, the folks walking their dogs seemed to have headed off in another direction. We tried to sneak up on the heron we'd seen earlier, but he took off before we got too close. We also spotted a female wood duck with ducklings swimming quietly off - I found that unusual, since they're generally pretty noisy when they swimming or flying away.
We also watched more swans, and even saw a muskrat at one point - up in the branches of a low hanging bush! When we left the trails and walked along the shore of the lake closest to the road, Ann spotted a heron, and incredibly he didn't fly off, possibly because of the injury to his wing. That enabled me to get some of the best pictures I've ever taken of a heron... way cool!
We wrapped up with another visit to the shore of Lake Ontario, and had some great views of the sunset over the water... a beautiful and peaceful way to end our walk. I'm definitely going to try to get up here for a run or two this summer!
JMH
