Bruce & Grey Counties - Grey Highlands 1

This year Canada Day (July 1) fell on a Tuesday. I was lucky enough to also have the Monday off so I decided to explore some specific areas of the Grey Highlands and Bruce Peninsula over 3 days. The weather was almost perfect, not too hot with no humidity, and ultimately lots of sun.

Sunday night I drove up to Blue Mountain Resort and stayed in one of the village hotels. Blue Mountain is really the Niagara Escarpment as it passes close to the town of Collingwood. I have always liked the small but fun mountain village there (winter or summer) as it has some very nice bars/restaurants and live bands in a couple of them almost every weekend.

Grey Highlands

The plan was to check out a couple of interesting areas at the close-by Osler Bluffs area in the morning as the forecast called for sunny weather all day Monday. Unfortunately I woke up to heavy fog and short downpours. I decided to at least get some pictures of what I was going to explore.

The left picture is at the top of a "road closed - use at your own risk" area. As I did not have cable in my winch (long story), and it was still raining and wet, I decided to not give it a try this time. This is looking east with Georgian Bay in the far distance.

The right picture is just a bit further west, another "use at your own risk" area but this time "water over road". This is at the bottom of a further rise in the Escarpment. The road does a couple of switchbacks and ends up at the top close by the top of the Osler Bluffs ski area. With the rain starting to come down again, I didn't want to go wading through the water to see if there were any rocks, how far it went for, and whether the bed was firm or not. I will definitely be back here in late summer with hopefully some drier weather.

I continued west an alternate way heading for Beaver Valley. A stop on a forest road alongside some rock outcroppings. And halfway down the east side of Beaver Valley.

You can see the steep road exiting the other side of the valley just to the left of the trees in the foreground. But before going up that hill I drove south down to Lower Valley Road to check out the 2 waterfalls in the area. Looking north from the valley. Next to the small Eugenia hydro power generating station built it 1914. A bird crossing the road, my photographer friend Mike says its a Spruce Grouse female.