Petroglyphs National Park
On one of our vacation days in the Kawarthas, we stopped at the Petroglyphs Park, had our picnic first and then went into the education centre to learn more about it. While our daughter and son-in-law went to take the picnic stuff back to the van, the girls found a small caterpillar. They named it and pretended that it was their pet. When their parents returned they held the stick by the tree where they found it and let the caterpillar off the stick.
We were ready to tour the centre.
We walked on down the path to the Petroglyph display. I was not prepared for what I saw, a large building surrounding the rocks, a place where we dared not take photos, so I kept my cell phone tucked away. Large windows let in natural light and the building is there to protect the art from eroding further.
Our granddaughters were invited to make rubbings with crayons of various shapes of the art in the teaching rocks and take them home.
According to the park website, this is the:
Largest known concentration of Indigenous rock carvings (petroglyphs) in Canada, depicting turtles, snakes, birds, humans and more; this sacred site is known as “The Teaching Rocks”
After our tour of the learning rocks we left that area of the park and stopped at a different place where we took a short hiking trail.
McGinnis Lake where we took photos was a certain kind of lake with layers of oxygen concentration. I didn’t have time to read the whole sign so I took this picture instead, to read later.
This park was well worth the time and one could spend quite a bit longer in the centre viewing the displays, asking questions of the guides along with seeing the video shown in the theatre. Outdoors there were more places and paths to explore. We’d covered about as much as we could with the children who needed to move around more. That said, I believe they enjoyed certain parts of the adventure that day as well, even if we’d had a bit of a ride to find a place.
I love daytrips like this, I remember them from being little too. Lovely post.
Thank you, Charlotte. It was fun to do it with our grandchildren and their parents.