Back to Nova Scotia-The Bog

   Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. If you're celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, are you busy with any prep? I’ve been trying to figure out what to make for a dessert.   I'm heading with my husband to Maine to his sister's house as we've been doing for the last few years. The best thing is is that my sister-in-law is married to a chef, so barring some crisis, dinner will be delicious. 😉

    Today I am going to share a few more photos from this past September's  trip to Nova Scotia. Last Friday I shared a few photos from our visit to Cape Breton Highlands National Park. ( That post is here if you are interested: Cape Breton Highlands National Park-part 1.) I wasn't quite sure how to write that park post, so I just shared the photos in random order. 

    Yes we did get lucky with the sunshine the day we visited the park, especially seeing the next 2 days while we were on Cape Breton Island it was cloudy and even a bit chilly. However, some of the trails we thought about walking in the park were closed. I'm not sure if it was because we arrived a bit late at these trail heads (well a bit late being it was in the 11 AM ballpark) and the maximum numbers of walkers/hikers had been reached for the day,  or if they were closed because of the drought and  the needed environmental protection from that.   Or maybe there were other reasons. However we did take a few short walks on open trails. One I found interesting, (although it was quite short) was a bog trail.

If you're not familiar with bogs, they are characterized by wet spongy ground. The wet is sometimes not even visible from the surface, and if that water is covered by several meters of growth you may be able to walk on the top of the bog and feel not squishy but not solid ground beneath your feet.

   This bog walk had pockets of exposed water and much of it had a wooden boardwalk to walk on.

   Bogs are environmentally important because they can control the flow of water in an area by holding it like a giant sponge and even purifying it in that process. They can also absorb excess carbon from the atmosphere and store it. Of course they also create an environment for some plants and a place for many animals to live or feed in. 

   I believe  (although I may be wrong as I'm trying to tell from my photo) the plant in this next photo is of a plant commonly known as Arctic Cotton. I saw a lot of type of flower on one of my trips to Iceland.

    Because bogs tend to be acidic, often specialized types of plants grow there. I definitely recognized all these next flowers though. I saw a lot of them when we hiked  the Tablelands in Gross Morne National Park in Newfoundland back 2018. These are the flowers on the purple pitcher plant. 

Here's a diagram that was on a sign in the park. 

Can you see the flowers scattered around the bog in this next photo?

    This walk might have been short, but it was an interesting one. I hope you enjoyed the views too. 

    For those of you in the US, I hope you have a nice Thanksgiving Day tomorrow. And for everyone, have a nice rest of your week.