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…
Definitely pretty even though Meech lake has kind of a bitter taste for the Quebecoise I am 😉
Beautiful photos. Your leaves are ahead of our of course but will be glorious in a few weeks. Congratulations on your spider. Nice shot and didn’t hurt a bit.
So, is this one of those Ottawa beaches you were referring to? 😉
Hey, we mustn’t let a silly constitutional fracas ruin a lovely lake. I’ve swum there too. It’s great. Lovely photos, Zhu! I’ve just taken a bunch in Pennsylvania where I’ve visiting my sister, here in the Pocono mountains. I’ve going to get them up on the internet and send you the link, Zhu – after I get back (tomorrow). The weather has been gorgeous. Oh, and the Gatineau in the winter is fabulous if you bring cross-country skis. They groom the trails so that you can go the slow way (twin tracks) or “skate” on your skis and really zoom. And it doesn’t cost anything, unlike downhill skiing. All paid for by the Canadian taxpayer with NCC money. 🙂 Have you tried it?
Wow. That’s an interesting hike, and I am surprised that there are bathrooms (or rather, washrooms in Canadian) in the woods! I wonder who maintains them?
The lake is gorgeous. It’ll be peak color time down here in about a week, hopefully I’ll remember to take some pictures! And I’ll use the great tips you’ve been giving us 🙂
Oh wow. So beautiful.
Nature at its best !
Such a beautiful place!
Beautiful!! Very relaxing and peaceful. I need to go find places like these and escape from my workloads! Brrrrr
@Cynthia – I’m sure it does! It’s fairly neutral to me since I arrived after the battle 😉
@Tulsa Gentleman – I swear that spider was looking at me and wondering what I was doing 😆
@Em – Yes, exactly! 😆 And this is the nicest one.
@Margaret – Can’t wait to see your pictures, I heard it was a gorgeous state! I should really get into winter sports. I don’t mind skating (I learned in France, we had a skating rink in my city for some reason) but skiing looks hard.
@Linguist-in-Waiting – I guess the park maintains them. If my memory is good, they are actually pretty clean, just very basic.
@Soleil – Do take pictures! We will compare leaves 🙂
@Agnes – It is!
@Sidney – Canada is big on nature… this is one of the best thing about the country.
@kyh – Yes, this is a good place to escape civilization, yet it’s not too far. Perfect.
The spider looks spooky and poisonious too…….that’s a pretty close shot. Love the calming effect it has on me when I look at all the photo Zhu 😀
The water is so pristine!
I wonder if you have any big fish in the lake…
It’s such a great place to shoot autumn photos!
The spider picture is * * * * *! 🙂
HAHAHAHA!