Hiking: Christie Lake

Yesterday was Civic Holiday in Canada - did you enjoy your long weekend? I sure did!

Yesterday was a perfect day - sunny and warm, bright blue skies without a single cloud, and a nice breeze to keep it from being overwhelmingly hot like it has been most of the summer. Seriously, check out that sky!

We spent the day at Christie Lake. This was our second time there, having gone swimming on our anniversary in July. This time, we decided to check out the hiking trails first (we almost did last time, but an annoying deer fly would not leave my head alone and it was getting late, so we decided to head home for our fancy dinner instead). Here are a few (ok, a lot of) photos from our hike:

We only walked a small part of the available trails, but it was gorgeous! I love the peacefulness of the forest, stepping out of the full sun into the shadowy interior. The camera I was using was set to auto, so it's hard to tell how dark it really was, but here are a couple shots that give you a pretty good idea:

Christie Lake is set in the middle of a large conservation area, parts of which are being reforested. You could really tell that this part of the woods was "man-made" - trees don't normally grow in perfectly straight lines!

After our hike we had a picnic / snack of cucumber, tomato and delicious strawberries. Then we walked to the beach. You can just barely see the beach in the photo below (though it's quite large - 360m of rough sand) - it's on the left, past the bend where that clump of trees is:

The breeze was stronger over the water, making it a bit too chilly to actually swim, but we did walk in and get our legs wet. Then we found a spot in the shade / sun (Pat wanted the heat, my pale skin wanted the shade) and just relaxed for a bit.

To top off a perfect day, we stopped at a farm / farmer's market just down the road and picked up a load of amazing fresh fruit and vegetables (most of it picked that morning). The sweet corn we had for supper was incredible! I can't wait to go back (both to the market and Christie Lake)!