Salmon Arm and Margaret Falls

5 September 2014   I’ll spare you the painful puns about Salmon parts and what happened to Margaret

We started off today with a short drive to Margaret Falls in Herald Provincial Park on the northwest side of the Arm (I guess they called it an arm since finger doesn’t do justice to this big chunk of Shuswap Lake).

Cool and well shaded in this little canyon. Easy trail right up to the Falls.

Been there done that. Now what?

Back to town. Down to the waterfront.

Looking north from the trail.

We decided to take the shore trail through the Nature Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. It was hot and sunny. Could we have erred in the order of operations today?

That green expanse will be lake bottom in the spring.

Looking at the municipal docks. Yes the water was that low.

This place is a birder’s paradise in the Spring – we were surprised to see white pelicans hanging out here in September. Perhaps it’s because the lake is so low in the Fall and the fishing looks easy (for pelicans and herons anyway).

No zoom lens. 2 pelicans with a heron in front plus a gazillion other birds.

We slogged through the heat to the end of the trail and back and congratulated each other for choosing this unshaded route in the middle of a hot, virtually cloudless day. And dipping our toes into what resembles an evaporated swamp to cool off didn’t hit the option list. Turns out we still have some learning to do about timing

The geese have elected a leader and are starting basic training:

Alright - everybody follow me

N aah - too much work. We'll train tomorrow...

I did get an OK dragonfly shot:

He was following Norene around and ignoring me. Understandable – by this point

she still smelled pretty good and I had exceeded my “best before” long in advance of this meeting.