Owen Sound Bay (6 sec, f/18, 100 ISO, 24mm)
Windmill farm (1/125 sec, f/13, 100 ISO, 45mm)
700 kilometers. 10 waterfall locations. That made for a busy, but enjoyable few days at the end of August. The weather was perfect, for the most part. On a few nights, the heavy clouds and rain kept me from sunset or astronomical shooting but thankfully, I was able to capture a great sunset on my first night in Owen Sound. After driving along the eastern shoreline, I stumbled on a gravel parking area that was next to a public boat launch. It turned out to be a great, quiet spot with an expansive view over Owen Sound Bay. Aside from a few boaters coming and going, there were only two other photographers there.
Over the course of the week, I also found a few unexpected spots that I couldn't help but stop at. One of those spots was a windmill farm that came out of nowhere, among the regional farmland outside of Shelburne on my way up north. I had to turn off and find a spot to get a few shots. After 15 minutes of driving through the side roads, I found a grass “pocket” off the road that I was able to pull my car into, which was right at the edge of one of many cornfields. It felt like being in one of those movies that are set in the old country towns...deserted roads, corn fields as far as you can see, and not a soul anywhere except for a couple on the porch of their farm house that was across the street from where I parked.
As for the many waterfall locations, they covered the whole range from good to disappointing. And that's not accounting for the water conditions. Unfortunately, going out so late in a hot, dry summer season, the water levels were low which made the cascades of the falls less spectacular than they typically are. A couple of locations (as if 10 in one trip wasn't enough!) I wasn't able to get to. Indian Falls, which is located just to the north of Owen Sound along the west shore of the Bay, was totally dry! I was keeping tabs on the websites for the various locations and the one for Indian Falls advised that there hasn't been any water flowing since early August...disappointing since it was one of the larger waterfalls on my list, being 15 metres high. The other location that I didn't get to was Holstein Dam in the small town of Holstein (of course), just north of Mt. Forest. Not because there weren't any falls like at Indian Falls, but because I couldn't find the Dam falls (pun intended)! A lack of signage in the park where the falls were located to direct you to where the falls actually were, and no parking in the park either...at least none that was legal. The only spot I could pull the car over was clearly marked with no parking signs, and I didn't want to risk stopping there not knowing whether the walk to the falls was 2 minutes or 20 minutes away. Here’s the list of waterfalls that I visited:
McGowan Falls
Inglis Falls
Weavers Creek Falls
Walter’s Falls
Webwood Falls
I plan on doing a writing up of the waterfall locations that I visited. Keep checking back to find out more about these different waterfalls of the north.