To The Sugarbush Once More

Somewhat immodestly our county, Lanark, calls itself the Maple Syrup Capital of Ontario. There are many operations withing striking distance of home, but 3 of them feature dining facilities. Our favourite of the 3 is Wheelers which is the one farthest away. But the trip takes less than an hour, and we probably do it 3 times in a typical year: winter, spring and autumn.

I post a blog after just about every visit, so I won't post photos of the buildings and museums this time, except this one of Sue happily awaiting her pancake, french toast and sausages. Mmmmm.

After our fine repast, we walked the shortest of the several trails. It was definitely fall in the sugar bush, but it was such an overcast day that the picture opportunities weren't inspiring. Putting the camera in shade mode (you can also do this in post) helped bring more life into the photos, but they still missed being lit up by the sun. It is also unfortunate that there is no red in the sugar bush.

But we take pictures anyway and take pictures of people taking pictures. (We recently joined the 21st century and purchased smart phones, and the pic above of Sue and this one of me was taken with them.)

With grand scenes not being very grand to say the least, I tried to concentrate more on little things.

I thought leaves on this boulder might be interesting. It wasn't actually terribly interesting, but it was something. You can see a sap line in the background.

There are boulders strewn all about the sugarbush: erratics deposited by the receding glaciers. I liked this one with the interesting tree behind it.

There are quite a few of these boulders in this pic of Sue, which is a little fuzzy because the shutter speed was quite slow for this pic. Sap lines are also prominent in the background.

There is a wee barn at the end of the trail, and this fellow met us there.

And off we went, taking a somewhat long and circuitous route home. The foliage was so-so on this dull day, but it was still worth seeing. Mostly, we are resigned to seeing and enjoying in passing, but at a T-intersection, I was able to stop and snap this just to give an idea of what the drive was like that day. You can also see how overcast the day was.

And that's it. I suppose that we'll more than likely be back in winter, probably late winter if traditions hold.