This weekend Angela and I decided to go for a walk along the Musagetes Trailway, which is part of the Walter Bean Grand River Trail that runs through RIM Park in Waterloo. It is a short section of trail (we walked 4km down the trail, then turned around and walked back), but it goes by a sixth generation Mennonite farm, through a small forest preserve and flood plain wetland, along the river banks of the Grand, and past the Grey Silo golf course.

Since it's a newer trail, the surrounding farmland hasn't had a chance to grow up around it yet, so there wasn't much shade, and parts of the trail felt just like we were walking on a golf course... especially because the golf course was only five feet away in some cases. Oh well, maybe we will go back in 30 years and see if it has improved.

We did see some wildlife on the trail though, which was neat. The top image is a grasshopper that was on the paved path. He let me get very close to take a photo. The bottom left is a little mouse that we saw hopping along beside the trail. When I stepped in close to get a photo, the mouse froze, probably in self defense, so I was able to get pretty close for a picture. We also saw a toad hopping across the trail in front of some bicyclists. Once they had pedaled off, I tried to quickly snap a photo before he hopped into the woods, so this was the best shot I could get.

Technical details: These photos were taken with my Rebel XT + kit lens at ISO 100, f/8.