Bruce & Grey Counties - Bruce Peninsula 3

Bruce Peninsula - Lake Huron Side

Tuesday the 1st of July ended up being the best day of all. Not a cloud in the sky and very comfortable 19 degrees Celsius. I headed south from Tobermory and turned towards the Lake Huron side just south of Bruce Peninsula National Park.

The various farm roads took me close to the water from time to time. The West coast is much different than the eastern Georgian Bay side with lots of sandy beaches and very shallow water. My ultimate destination on this day was Sauble Falls.

On the way I wanted to explore some beach trails that are clearly visible on the hi-def satellite pictures from Google. When I actually arrived at the first location, I saw what I was looking at on Google and learned why. The recent dramatic water level drop on the Great Lakes have caused huge beach expansion in these areas. Where once water used to be, there are large areas of hard-packed sand and beach vegetation. So the only way to get to the water is to drive a kilometer or so into what used to be water. That is when I happened to come across this.

The first picture is of the male Piping Plover only, the second one you can make out the newly-born chick in the middle. This is what they look like up close, with the pictures actually being taken this year at Sauble beach, just south of where I was.

Photographs from Wiki article.

Because the Piping Plover is endangered in the Great Lakes habitat, the Ministry of Natural Resources had a section of the beach closed and the local volunteers were on patrol watching for predators. This was the first nesting and hatching on this particular beach in 35 years. The first in the entire region was last year on Sauble beach.

I continued south to my next intended beach exploration looking to set up my chair for a nice lunch. There were many more people at this location with lots of parasailing / parasurfing going on.

After about 2 hours in the sun, I headed down to Sauble Falls.