The stop over (turtle sighting!)

Between Quebec City and Edmonton we stopped for the weekend in Ottawa to visit some lovely people. The weekend involved some great conversation, brunch, a pedal powered pup crawl (with the Kell's Angels) for a birthday bash, market visits, and a lovely adventure to Gatineau Park - all packed into 2 days. I didn't tote my camera to most of it - but the little hike in Gatineau park was just so lovely - I thought I'd share.

We did the loop around Pink Lake- which had all sorts of neat fun facts. It's a beautiful park - somewhere I'd like to return to in the future. The lake itself is crystal clear. It's apparently a rare meromictic lake - which means that the bottom section is completely void of oxygen and the different layers never mix - having to do with depth and angle of the sides, cliffs surrounding it, temperature... It was really pretty.

My highlight was the GIANT turtle that was swimming by. I looked it up - and I think it might be a blanding turtle - but it's hard to know because it was covered in thick green algae. Just after the excitement of the big turtle - there appeared a babe. Great fun. It was neat to see them so close up.

TURTLES! (and frogs and fish)

It was a lovely little adventure. Thanks to Erin for taking us!

~peace to you