March 2011 - Photography Assignment - Show us your favourite park(s)

[Wicked Dark]

I like the monofilament recycling tube...great idea, that stuff is deadly.

[QuietOne]

I like the monofilament recycling tube...great idea, that stuff is deadly.

It's in the early stages, there's a campaign trying to raise awareness of them, so that people use them. Every little bit helps, though.

[Iguanasan]

Point Pleasant Park has many treasures but one of the things I like the most is that it's well used. People love to go jogging in the park and here's an example of someone doing just that.

[jude01]

So I'm gonna break the rules a little here, I don't really have a favorite park near me, I have the waterfront walk I always do but you have all seen a ton of photos from there.

So this is Kokanee Creek Park
Kokanee Creek Provincial Park - BC Parks
near my home town of Nelson B.C. I spent many summers here as a kid, camping, swimming, hiking, fishing, birdwatching etc.
Ive done the best I could to tidy up these photos but they where taken before I was into photography

there are many trails through the woods, ponds, marsh, and to the waterfall



There are white sandy beaches, it is surrounded by Kootenay lake



The lake is glacier fed, so your doing a polar bear swim in the middle of august! but this is the lagoon " kid pool" a shallow spot where it gets up to warm bath water temperatures, There are also strings of frog eggs, tadpoles and garter snakes!



When the lake gets low in the summer, this sandbar is revealed and you can almost walk across the whole lake



and at the end of summer, the Kokanee (land locked salmon) come back to the spawning channels, this is a great place to see osprey and eagles and little American dippers diving into the creek after the eggs

[Iguanasan]

What a cool set, Jude. Thanks for sharing.

[QuietOne]

Looks like a great place to spend summers, Jude. And Iguanasan, yours looks like a great place to take a break from the office in.

Here's one more I visit regularly during lunch. Officially, it's a park. There's a sign saying so. Practically, it's a little man-made wetland, complete with educational signs. It's just off part of the Greenbelt near the golf course on one side and a water park across the tiny irrigation channel on the other.

The walk up the middle of the plantings. There's very shallow water to each side, with rock filled channels to move the water to different sections.


The main pool of water. The redwings are already singing their heads off. The mallards like it, as do the occasional wood ducks and heron. There are also lily pads in the late summer, complete with flowers, but the reeds surround everything, so the only way you'll get a photo of those is with a ladder and a long lens.


Sediment basin. It actually handles runoff from the little parking lot nearby, and cleans the water before releasing it into the wetland.


One of the educational signs. There are half a dozen, a pretty good number considering the size of the site.

[asnow]

This is a park in downtown Mississauga, only a few hundred meters from City Hall. It is named after Mississauga's twin city in Japan.