Thanks, Andre. Glad you liked and can use the photo of the sumacs. They're lovely to look at--I've always liked them, not least for their reliable bright autumn colours. Someone told me that the variety/ies we have here are different from those in France. (I've never heard, for example, of anyone here using the sumac seeds for cooking--I understand that they're commonly used in French cooking.)
The cluster of bushes in this photo is on the northern shore of the Ottawa River--the camera and I are looking eastwards, downstream. Only after downloading the photo onto my computer did I realize that there were only a few of the dark reddish-brown conical seed clusters in the photo. Not sure why that's so: an oddity peculiar to these bushes, perhaps? Other sumacs seem to have a heavy harvest of seed clusters.
BTW, the photo here is fairly lo-res, only about 480 kb. The original is 3.9 MB. Happy to send you that by PM if you like--let me know.
Your point about Canada's roads is well-taken. Many, even in the eastern part of Canada, the area with the most dense population, were laid down in the 20th century, hence were shaped by the automobile. Even those tracks dating from an earlier time were substantially reworked during the 20th century, again principally to satisfy the needs/hegemony of motor traffic. Then, there's our awkward geography & geology, especially in those large swathes of the country which were glaciated during the last ice age. There, on the Canadian Shield, lakes are everywhere (the figure usually cited for Ontario is 400,000--but who counts 'em?) the rivers are wiggly, and obdurate hills of ancient granite defy railway- and road-builders as well as cyclists.
I was tickled to see the snake--we don't normally see many. As it was, the retaining wall for Champlain Lookout, my usual stop at the summit, whence we have splendid views NW along the escarpment and over the Ottawa River into Ontario, is being repaired after accumulated frost-and-ice damage. (This is appropriate: there's a big info plaque at the lookout, informing reader that the spot where they're standing was under a mile of ice 12,000 years ago.) So, I plunked myself down atop the wall beside a narrow grassy verge, looked over the edge of the wall, and there was the snake, utterly unconcerned.
These photos, BTW, were taken with my Motorola phone. I normally don't have much luck with that--prefer my Panasonic ZS40--but these worked out well.
Another BTW: Have attached a photo taken ten days ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of San Miguel, the oldest church in the US, dating from ~1620. (This has very little to do with cycling 'cept for the fact that the church is on the Turquoise Trail, which once ran from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and beyond, and when we drove that section, now New Mexico Rte 14, I thought, "Wow! Mountains and semi-arid plains! What a cycling route this would be.")
Nice brilliant blue sky, eh? The air is soooo dry, it could be Botswana, Namibia or the Karroo.
