A cool wind blows to shore chilling our faces and pushing waves against a boulder strewn beach.  The brilliant morning sunlight dances on the water surface and casts marvelous shadows from scattered driftwood and even darting shore birds.  Creeks emerge from the thickly treed surroundings and meander across the beach in a mixture of quick moving streams and sun warmed pools.  We have found one more place that couldn’t possibly be improved upon.

A trail winds its way across the wave battered beach, through thick stands of pine draped with moss towering above a carpet of lichens to burst back out onto massive rock outcroppings.  Signposts tell the story of amazing geology and every turn reveals another glorious view.  A long stretch of boulder hopping makes the legs ache just a tad and breath come a little faster.  Magnificent.

The rocky shore is splattered with color wherever wildflowers and grasses can find purchase.  The fleeting shadows of tadpoles and water beetles flicker across the warmed pools perched above the wave line.  A tiny green frog moves out into the sun along a shadows edge.

Blueberries.  They love this sparse, nutrient poor soil just inches thick along the transition from rocky shore to forest.  They are everywhere.  We can’t resist picking a “few”.

Hey, there is a live bear trap.  It seems that a black bear has been visiting camp.  I hope he has gone on and they never catch him.

Sunset.  There is just something about sunset over the water.  It is one of nature’s extraordinary-ordinary events.

I suppose I should have become wary when folks in the “gateway community” of Chapleau didn’t seem to know anything about it.  Still I blindly pressed on.  It is the largest Crown Preserve in the world, 7 million acres.  That has to be impressive right?

Wrong.  We did eventually get directions to the Preserve entrance.   I large signboard sported a map showing the main wildlife drive including locations of all the wildlife viewing platforms.  Good, that’s a start.

The short version, we saw absolutely no wildlife….well unless you count the snake Kent ran over on the road.  No moose or bear or fox or wolf.  We drove about 50 miles of pretty rough gravel road and, bupkis.  They did have pretty cool viewing platforms made of native logs and elevated about 10 feet for good viewing into prime moose and bear habitat.  The lower section is protected (I am not sure exactly what from) by electric fence.

On a creepy note, one platform sported a warning sigh, “Do not go beyond this point.  Wildlife baiting”.  It seems that this preserve has pretty much completely gone over to the dark side, hunting not viewing.  Most preserves at least make an effort to support viewing wildlife during the off season.  They seem to have had great plans for this preserve but it very much falls short of expectations.  To anyone coming this way, leave the Chapleau Crown Preserve off your to do list.