Thanksgiving Day at the Rapids

As you well know by now, we enjoyed our wonderful but non-traditional Thanksgiving meal on the previous day, but the actual day was beautiful, and I think we observed it well. The beauty was found in both the glorious weather and in the remaining colour. 

We drove up to Blakeney Rapids, a small conservation area about 15 minutes north of us, where rocks jut out of what is almost a distributary off the main channel of the local Mississippi River. We are close to the Canadian Shield in much of Eastern Ontario, and it comes to the surface here.

It has been a droughtish summer. While there are always boulders here, they looked more prominent and ubiquitous yesterday in the lower-than-usual water. 

That ↑ sight greets us from near the parking lot, but then there are woodsy and somewhat rocky trails to hike through to the main channel of the river. We crossed this ↓ footbridge. There are others on the more circuitous route, but this is the only one that we crossed on the more direct path.

The trail had its share of inclines, branches and boulders, but a number of people, including us, were out enjoying the paths.

We found two cute benches opposite each other on one part of the trail, and I photographed one of them. They were both very low to the ground, so not really helpful to septuagenarians who are getting rather close to becoming octogenarians.

However, the bench situation changed when we came to the end of the trail where it overlooks the main channel of the unmighty Mississippi. They had built a nice bench on the Precambrian bedrock since we were last there. 

We took a selfie on the bench. Oddly enough, the picture-in-picture feature is still not in the phone's camera options but still just part of the Facebook app — I think only the Messenger part, to be specific. I find this rather odd, but, once taken, we can save it to the regular camera roll. Go figure, eh.

Back at the beginning, we sat on a bench for awhile before turning back home. Thanks to my new phone, I was able to take a telephoto picture of the distant bank. Getting a zoom was the main reason why I spent my children's inheritance on an iPhone17 Pro. Good phones ain't cheap me dearies.

Finally, Sue noticed an unusual tree to our left and asked me to pose for a possible photo for her group if it were to become suitable for a prompt someday.

And that, mes amis, concludes Thanksgiving for another year. It was a good one, and I am thankful to have been there for it and in decent health along with my mate who is also in good health. As a plus, our tiny family had also managed to come together for a few hours on the previous day.