Hiking at Happy Valley in King Township Area

John and I decided to use the Victoria long weekend to go a bit outside the Toronto area for a walk, photo, bird hike this time. I was thinking Algonquin, but that is a bit too far for a day trip only.

John looked around online and he stumbled upon Happy Valley Forest in the township of King, which is just north west of Wonderland. There is the Oak Ridges trail as well, which we did first, before the Happy Valley Forest trail.

The Love Mountain trail was definitely chalk loaded with birds, especially in certain spots. There is one main path that goes across from road to road. Off that path, close to the area we parked, are 2 wood stakes that are the entrance to an abundance of smaller winding paths. On those paths are where many of the birds we saw, were. There is a bend in one path, that came near a water way, and there were many wrens, grosbeaks and orioles.
Our most exciting sighting was a Black Billed Cuckoo! We also saw an Indigo Bunting more than once, and a Ruby Throated Hummingbird in a tree. We also spotted a one legged Robin, the poor little guy, but he was singing quite beautifully.

We spent about 3.5 hrs in the Oak Ridges trail area. After that, we drove 5 mins away to the entrance of the King Ridges Stables. There, you can park in a small spot by the metal road divider fencing, and head up towards the entrance to the Happy Valley Forest. It's a gorgeous forested landscape, slightly rugged and windy, and has some real steep spots on the path. We had hoped to see a couple of the rare creatures such as the Jefferson salamander and the red shouldered hawk. We did see 2 salamanders but both jetted away far too quickly, from us, to get photos of either lol! But, I was glad just to finally see a salamander!

Tons of Trillium, many very tall, over 12-14"" in height! As well, we saw Trillium that were changing to green, this I have never seen before.

There is an abundance of birch trees in the Oak Ridges trails, and we did see the tallest most huge aspens we've ever seen, in the Happy Valley Forest trail.

Super gorgeous trails and quite the work out, this area is worth exploring and hiking though! But, respect the many spots of private property and stay on the trails, as this area is sensitive and preserving its naturalized state is vital.

Sunsets From Our Place

Ok, I haven't done one of these sunsets posts since Sept. 2015 lol! Which means, a Lot of image files to go through to pull and organize some images from.

We face north, and we get some spectacular skyscapes and sunsets all through the year.

Here is a compilation of the best of them, through to June 2016. I'll do a 2nd post from June 2016 to May 2017 in a bit.

We'll start with May 13th 2017 and work backwards :-)





Sept 12th 2015 to Present:

Hi, How Are You?

This is what met me (I embellished it a bit with the How Are You part lol) when I first looked down and saw one of the coolest beach finds yet.

My husband and I were walking down at the shores of Lake Ontario, easterly from the base of the Doris McCarthy Trail. There were a couple of recent land slides from all the rain, large sections of the clay and mud bluffs, along with their passengers, groups of tall ornamental grasses, blocking a couple areas of the stone walking way parallel to the lake.

The city had a warning gate up, no public access due to eroding shorelines and such. It's quite the drive down there so we figured we'll venture down the path, and just not go near the water line if it looks to be precarious, since we'd made the drive.

The shoreline looked fine, a lot of extra washing up of stuff, so we continued. The land slides from the bluffs proved to be the real issue down there. But, they had already occurred.

This time, we trecked slowly closer to the water's edge and in doing so, we found quite a few cool little trinkets, pieces of glass, some little brick pieces, and one little man made "stone" that just spoke to me :-) I was standing still, and John was mentioning up ahead the huge land slide that blocked the walking way, but I was already looking at the ground. "Hi?" was I really seeing what looked like Hi on a stone? I'm like "get out" and I took a photo of it. I figured it would just wipe off, but as I picked it up, I saw that it was a worn piece of cement that some thick metal wire had been exposed and that rust and that wire created the word on it. How cool! It wasn't perfect but it was certainly legible. So, I took the little thing home and I really have become quite attached to it!

So, besides that thing, there were a few other living things that were cool to see. We spotted 2 pairs of Red Necked Grebes, quite a lot of Merganser ducks, Terns, and a Herring gull pretty far out, floating on the water among the Long Tail ducks. We also saw a Pine Warbler, but I didn't get any good shots of it, nor any of the other birds for that matter this time. It was just nice to see them.

Seems we weren't the Only people not to heed the warning sign and closed gate, there were a few others down there and we met another couple just passing the gate as we were coming up, joking about what it is good to see what law abiding citizens we all are lol!