Sandbanks Provincial Park, September 6, 2020

Visited the Sandbanks Provincial Park today. It's about 2.5 hours from Toronto in Picton (Beyond Belleville and Trenton). (It was 22 or 21$ for parking at the beach.)
 This is one of the best beaches near Toronto....and it's unique feature, setting it apart fro many other beach  are the sand dunes. The sands are silky soft ...the dunes are so tall, they are literally sand hills.  Tufts of  grass, aspen trees, and other vegetation grow sporadically on these dunes.  The water is shallow  for more than 50 feet into the lake and little kids can enjoy. The waters are clear and today the temperature was perfect...many folks were there in the water, swimming, playing and all really having a wonderful time.

There are three beaches of which we loved the dunes  beach. We enjoyed walking by the beach too and had our picnic lunch there.

Here are a few photos.

 Above ...a Zen sand garden, carved by the winds and this bit is also unmarked by human feet.

 The dunes rise  quite high above the lake...unfortunately the photos do not capture the height of the dunes.

 Above and below...tufts of grass growing in the sand dunes. Also some trees such as aspen.

 A

 Above...I have never seen a mushroom in sand...here I saw two.

 above... see the slope of this dune, the person is walking on. I loved walking here. It was like walking on the side of a sand mountain...you don't get hurt if you fall off!

 Above and below...doesn't it look like he's walking on a wall!

 
 Above...several Aspen saplings were growing in the sand here...One has to bend down  and observe the leaves to recognize them as aspen! They were so small.

 above : young aspen
Below: Aspen tree, a few years old and tall

 The sand dunes beach had lesser people than the other beach.  I loved having this vast space to ourselves. We walked slowly (as our feet sank at every step into the silky soft sands), climbing up the dunes and down to the beach.

 There were a whole lot of Canadian geese in the waters. This bit of the lake was green but my photos seem to have missed capturing the greenish waters.

 There was green weeds in the lake. Here the mud in the lake was this beautiful rust color.

I waded several feet into the lake to capture this lotus above. But did not dare to go closer than this as I was afraid. The water was already upto my waist and I did not want to risk getting my books, camera, etc wet.

 Above: 3 shots of a solitary lotus plant in Lake Ontario. The photos are blurred due to the mobility of the waves which kept  pushing this plant around.

Above a tuft of grass in the sand...there were such a variety of flowers and grasses here, I loved the 'look' of the grass on the sands, the symmetry of the plants and their shadows on the sand, the textures of the sand...Photos don't do justice to the real thing. You have to visit and see and enjoy.

The sand makes the shadows so vivid. This place could be a photographer's delight.

The two beaches we went were different in that one of them (not the dunes beach) had several bivalve shells while the dunes beach had few if no shells at all. It's intriguing that the waters  of one lake are so different (one supporting mollusks and one unsupportive of mollusks) just one or two miles apart!