After spending some time in downtown Sudbury on June 21, 2018, we went back to the campground[1] for the night. It was on a lake, so after we pitched our tents we went down to the beach to see what we could see. And the place was loaded with these mostly powder-white dragonflies, who would sometimes perch long enough for pictures.
Continuing our trip across Ontario, we had just pulled in to Carol’s Campsite (just outside of Sudbury[1]) on June 21, 2018 when this dragonfly landed on my shirt. He was in pretty rough shape, as something had taken off most of his forewing. He could still fly, but it was obviously a lot of effort for him and he spent a lot of time resting on my shirt and fingertips before he felt up to flying off.
I barely spotted this little black-and-yellow dragonfly sitting on the ground at Camp Nesbit on June 10, 2018. There it is, right in the middle of the picture. See it?
OK, that was just my contingency photo in case it spooked and flew off. It did let me move in closer, though, and I got some better pictures.
On the morning of June 9, 2018 at Camp Nesbit, Sam spotted this big moth on a windowscreen of one of the cabins.
From the size and shape, we immediately suspected that it was one of the Sphinx Moths.
While this specimen is from Camp Nesbit, you are likely to find this plant in wooded areas all across the UP. It is Wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens.
Here’s a little black-and-yellow spider that I haven’t seen in our own yard, but that I found in two locations about 400 miles apart. The first was from our trip to Camp Nesbit on June 9. She was eating some unidentifiable gnat-like thing, and her web was practically invisible.
This set of pictures is from several different locations over a period of about a month. To start with, back on June 8, Sam and I were on our way down to Camp Nesbit for a weekend event[1], and I spotted this turtle crossing the road. Road crossing is very dangerous for turtles, so we stopped and Sam retrieved it.
On June 20, 2018, we were on our way across Ontario[1] and stopped at Chutes Provincial Park to camp for the night. The park was nowhere near full (the ranger that we met said that the park didn’t normally get busy until after Canada Day on July 1), and so we had a nice secluded campsite within listening distance of the rapids that the park is named after[2].
Anyway, while we were setting up the tents, I happened to look down and see an odd-colored leaf next to my foot. And then realized it was no leaf.
On June 20, 2018 we were just starting a vacation trip across the UP and Canada (as far as Montreal). When we stopped at a roadside park/rest area just outside of Newberry, Sam noticed some Forest Tent Caterpillars (Malacosoma disstria) crawling on the side of the restroom buildings.
We found this little brick-red jumping spider running around on our carpet on July 8, 2017. The thing next to him is a bendy drinking-straw, for scale – he was easily small enough to run down the inside of it if he had wanted to.
