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Fall Foliage at Meech Lake, Gatineau Park

It finally stopped raining. Well, at least it stopped raining long enough for is to jump in the car and drive to Gatineau Park to take my usual Fall pictures, you know, the beautiful red and yellow leaves. We entered the park through Chelsea, Québec, and quickly realized it was still a bit early to experience the Fall rhapsody: trees weren’t as colourful as we thought they would. So we got sidetrack and ended up in Meech Lake instead. It had been a while since we were there.

Meech Lake is nested within Gatineau Park, the huge 400 km² park North of Ottawa, in the province of Québec. Many Canadians associated it with the 1987 Meech Lake Accord, when the then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney tried to persuade the Province of Quebec to endorse the 1982 Canadian Constitution (yep, didn’t work). But for a lot of residents in the National Capital Region, Meech Lake is a nice sandy beach and a popular swimming spot during these hot and humid summer days.

The houses around the lake always impress me: they are many mansions, isolated in the humongous park. Sure, we are only a 20 minutes’ drive from downtown Ottawa, but during the winter, it must feel like in a Stephen King novel.

We parked the car before the Lake and hiked to the nearest sandy beach, now closed for the season. We stood there for a little while, surrounded by the pine forest and the quiet lake. Only the leaves washed up on the shore reminded us it was October…

Hiking To Meech Lake
With Our Spider Friend!
In The Woods
Squirrels’ Food
Bathrooms in the Woods
Meech Lake
Clear Water and Leaves
Canadian Bathrooms (Outside the Igloo, to the Right)
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Zhu

French woman in English Canada.

Exploring the world with my camera since 1999, translating sentences for a living, writing stories that may or may not get attention.

Firm believer that nobody is normal... and it’s better this way.

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