HIGH FALLS, WAWA TO SOUTH BAYMOUTH, MANITOULIN ISLAND - June 24, 2017

'Fringed Polygala or gay wing orchid''High Falls on the Magpie River at Wawa''Fog rolls in at Agawa Bay'

Waking to sunshine and the muted roar of the falls, I find the wind has turned and heavy mist rising from the cataract drifts in the slanting light forming a rainbow which arches over the gorge below the thundering white water. The Quebec girls beside us crawl out of their van to admire the beautiful morning, and the set to boiling up their breakfast. As for us, it's off to Tim Hortens.

A half day's rain in the Superior Coastal Highlands becomes root beer colored water foaming to a head as it spills from the ridge tops down boulder strewn streams.

A curtain of diaphanous fog rolls in to close off Agawa Bay against the sunshine. Ghostly wisps of cloud weave themselves among white pine, oak and maple on the slopes. Rising through the billows to the light of day, we come out once again to blue skies punctuated by wind turbines on the hills above Goulais Bay.

Billows of white ox-eye daisies, yellow and orange devil's hawkweed counterpointed with a cluster of cerulean blue-flag iris all waving in the gentle breeze.

The crystal clean waters of a placid Lake Superior lap the precambrian shield in coves guarded by sentinel white pine trees that were saplings when Canada came into being.

Two large Canada flags wave proudly above a group of paddlers circled round two large voyager canoes beached on the sandy strand at Batchewana Bay. They are still a week of hard work away from the 150th celebrations at old Fort William in Thunder Bay on July 1st.

A pretty little arched bridge flanked by Rosa rugosa bushes calls to me, "Come and smell the roses."

The scent of freshly mown grass draws attention to a field where two teams of horses; black percherons and sorrel Belgians, working in tandem pulling reel mowers to swath a hayfield. This is Amish country.

At sunset, two sandhill cranes, their few day old colt and its nursemaid mallard duck, parade across a grassy meadow plucking up worms and insects. The lowering sun illuminates the adults chestnut plumage and forms a nimbus of gold round the colt. The squat male duck is comical as he waddles after his spindly legged charge. Who knows what twist of life has prompted the mallard drake to take up babysitting a young crane, but what is clear is the parents have no objection to the arrangement.

With a blast of her horn and all her lights glittering in the dark, the Chi Chi Man ferry slips from her mooring and glides out of South Bay Mouth for the last crossing of the day. We have chosen to take the early morning ferry, and so tuck in beside St Andrew's By The Sea United Church for the night

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