Black Lake
Our last day “under canvas”. A restless night, I am ready to go home and finding this marking time tedious. Woke to an overcast, smoky day though later it became warm, humid and buggy. After breakfast we went for a long walk along the beach going west. This area is lovely high sand banks with very large jack pine, possibly as old as one hundred years because they grow very slowly. Walking through the open parkland we passed a small shrine to the BVM set into a Birch tree stump. Coming home I slipped on the rocks and have (?) sprained / broken the little finger on my right hand, ironic that after 45 days and 850 km I should injure myself walking on the beach.
Large and no doubt very old jackpine on the sand spit
Ripple marks in Athabasca Sandstone boulder along the beach, 1.5 billion years old but looking identical to those along our sand spit
After lunch the bugs drove us into the tent to read. I finished “Sleeping Island” and John found enough on my Kindle to amuse himself. During the afternoon various groups from Black Lake Community have come across to our sand spit to picnic, swim, fly kites, tear about on jet skis, tube and would you believe, water ski. Two young Dene women even came and borrowed our canoe. The Dene may have been amazing canoeists of the north but their descendants don’t know what to do without a motor, still the girls had fun. Later another young family borrowed the canoe, we are beginning to feel like canoe hire!
Two young women from Black Lake take ‘Big Red’ for a paddle