Lower Faraday Road and Egan Chutes

After a week or so at the cottage, we bestirred ourselves to take a nice drive into the Hastings Highlands while the autumn colours were still showing nicely.

We started the trip by taking a backroad from Coe Hill to Bancroft rather than the standard highway route. We've driven this road before in autumn and are always pleased with what we see. Lower Faraday Road is not really in the Highlands, but it is always an autumn treat. In this first photo, we were about to drive under this rather splendid archway. How could one not stop to snap the shutter?

Still on Lower Faraday, I stopped the car and looked back for this next photo. The view didn't look so great in front of me, but I had a recollection that the view behind was a good one, and I was right. This occurred on October 01 2013. I find it good to mark the date whenever I fluke-ishly happen to be right about something. ;)

After a stop at Bancroft, we turned east on Highway 28 and stopped at Egan Chutes Provincial Park. It's a lesser known park, without attendants or entrance fees. We drove in on a bumpy road for a few minutes before we had to get out and walk the rest of the way. I took this photo while I was waiting for Sue to get herself organized for the hike.

The forested path ran alongside the York River. We both stopped to take photos, and this is one of mine. I was drawn by the combination of autumn colour, birch trees and reflections.

We were getting warm but plodded onward along the path, knowing that there was would likely be a treat at the end. Sue was happy to turn and wave to the camera.

We finally arrived at the falls or chutes at the end of the trail. For a younger more nimble person, there were many shots that could have been taken, but this old poop had enough trouble getting into position for this one. I had chosen not to carry my tripod on this trek, so I slowed my shutter speed to 1/8 second, which is pretty darn slow, and handheld the camera, hoping for decent results. Image stabilization technology worked pretty well to give me a bit of the silky water effect, which is what I was going for. I fuzzed (sorry for the overuse of technical terms) the trees on the far bank in post processing to draw more attention to the waterfall. I think it helped.

And so we come to the end of part one of our scenic tour. I had thought that I would cover the whole trip in one post, but I see that I have prattled on long enough for now.