Our next stop of the day was at Ellison Bluff county park, only a few miles up the road from where we had been hiking. We parked the car, grabbed the lunch we had packed, and walked over to find a picnic table in the shade to eat our lunch.
We quickly realized though that it was no ordinary park, there was a giant cliff side overlooking the lake with a magnificent view!
There were a lot of wildfires going on across southern Canada at the time and it was carrying down to our area, and was really bad the whole time we were on this trip. It made the view very hazy, which was a bummer. But it was still beautiful!
We sat on a bench overlooking the water and ate our food, and also visited with some of the people as they stopped along the trail.
The weather was absolutely perfect that day, the sun was shining and the air felt fresh (even if it was a little smokey) and we were happy as could be.
Here is a panorama of the view I took with my phone.
There were a few boats out on the water too, even a tourist boat.
There was this small little walkout that a few people could go down at a time to see the cliff sides down below.
It really was too bad that it was so hazy, I bet on a clear day you can see for miles and miles.
We even got to wave at some tourists as they motored by.
We walked down the trail a little ways but you couldn't go too far, so we just decided to head on to the next pretty place we could find.
After taking another look through the book we had brought for some good places to swim, I found this cove that said it was protected from the wind and a popular, yet secluded swimming spot. So, we decided to check it out.
It was perfect! Good thing we had brought our swimming clothes with us ;) We changed quick, and headed down to the water to enjoy the late afternoon air on the lake.
We were so astonished and how clear and pristine the water was, the bottom of the lake was soft smooth sand, and white rocks. We don't have water like that anywhere around home, so it was a beautiful treat we were happy to take advantage of.
We walked down the shoreline until we found the perfect spot in the sun.
The water was a nice temperature, but as the sun started going down it was a tad chilly. But we are tough and really wanted to swim so enjoyed wading around in the water and stayed as long as we could muster.
I just could not get over how clear the water was!!
We had some fun skipping rocks for a while as we dried off.
It was about 5:00 p.m. and we were getting hungry, so we started back towards the car.
This is definitely somewhere I would be very happy visiting again.
We wanted to find a spot to watch the sunset, so we hurried back to the cottage to eat some supper and go watch it. More on that in the next post.
