The Boreal Forest

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

This is our last day at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.  Only a light fog today, so our plan was to hike some trails.  Every since entering the north shore area at the Soo, we have been in a Boreal Forest.  We think we have enough understanding of what that is to share what we have learned.  A wide swath of land encompassing most of southern Ontario is Boreal Forest and is seen in other far north locations.  Michigan’s UP is not Boreal, for example.

The key components making up a Boreal Forest is a cool, damp environment with lots of decaying material.  Needles, leaves, and logs on the forest floor, with mostly evergreens, white birch, and aspen trees.  You have seen many of our pictures of lichen, moss, and mushrooms.   These thrive in this environment, with the exception of mushrooms, they can even grow on rocks.   With the heavy morning fog that we have seen, and even today with high humidity, there is plenty of moisture to keep these guys happy.

We have seen more varieties of mushrooms than anywhere and they are all over the place along these trails.  Lichen, varieties we’ve not seen before, grow here on other plants and rocks and possess a wide range of colors.  The moss is on trees, on the ground, on stumps, even rocks and varies in color and texture also.  It does remind us of Oregon, but the variety here is much greater.

One of the hikes, called Sea Lion, takes you to a rock outcropping.  At one time, before 1900, it had the shape of a crouching lion, but it’s head fell off.  Now its just an arch, although Lynn thinks it looks like a sea horse, you be the judge.

 

Here are some other pictures taken along this trail.  The scenery was outstanding.

The shoreline consisted of flat rounded rocks.  People scratched their names on them and perched them on a large ledge.  So we added ours.

We did ours on sandstone, just to be different.  The beach also had black sand, which Dan has been looking for, so down he went despite Lynn’s objections.

Ironically, had he waited about a hundred feet, there was an easy walk to the shore.  Ahh, but the challenge made that black sand special… Really!

Of course there were also some small stuff that caught our eye.

 

A black mushroom.  At first glance we thought it was just withered up; it is alive and there were a bunch of them in the area.  Its one of those unique varieties mentioned above.

Ok, for the parting shot about the Sleeping Giant, it was clear enough to get  a shot of it today.  This is The Sleeping Giant, as viewed from across Marie-Louise Lake.

He is lying on his back, head toward the right.  So first bump on right is his head, the second bump from the right is his Adam’s apple, third from right is his chest, and the long bump at the left end are his legs. Like we said, it requires lots and lots of imagination.  

Tomorrow we go to Thunder Bay, our last stop in Canada.