On Saturday, the Ryan and I drove to the Valley for an untraditional Thanksgiving. Instead of stuffing ourselvessilly and lounging around all day we went on a 10km hike at Blomidon Provincial Park to work up an appetite.
To enjoy the views the park has to offer (from 600 feet high cliffs), we hiked up Jodrey Trail, continued on to The Look-off Trail, The Woodland Trail, and about half of the Borden Brook Trail which crosses the park’s road at about midway and we continued downhill from there to the parking lot. The incline was hard on the knees, but the road is closed in the off-season, so you can’t avoid it if you want to access the rest of the trails. The trails are clearly marked with maps posted throughout, but the trails are still narrow and natural (which I like). I would say that with the inclines, declines, and rooty paths, the hike is moderately challenging (some of our crew were a bit more pooped than others!). In the winter the trails are popular with cross-country skiers and snowshoers.
We had perfect hiking weather, warm, but with a breeze. There are parts of the forest that are all maple trees, it is quite spectacular. I got some more wild plant pictures to add to my Wild Plants of Nova Scotia page which I will update later this week. I also spotted some seedy black bear scat and coyote scat. At one of the look off points we watched a hawk or an young eagle soaring below us. The bird moved to fast for me to zero in on him with my binoculars for proper identification. However, we saw a flock of what I believe are common eiders, a striking seaduck. From our high standpoint, these birds looked like nothing more than water bugs floating on the surface of the sea, but with the binoculars we could make out that distinguishing duck shape and the black and white coloring (the females are brown). Even with the binoculars you can see that they are accomplished divers—diving up to depths of 20m to feed on mollusks and crustaceans including mussels, clams, scallops and urchins. Common eiders overwinter on the coast of Nova Scotia and are the largest sea duck in North America.
The best picture we could get of the common eiders.
Do you see the troll’s face in this rock formation . . . makes you wonder . . .
My mother posted about the hike here.
I’ll do a separate post on the plants we saw so check back soon!
