Morningside, Etc. - into the unknown
Back from a bit of a spring break (only to find it's still very much winter out there), and back to Scarborough in my continuing quest to document all of Toronto's wilderness areas. As my check-list now grows ever shorter, the spots which I'm lead to investigate become ever remoter, and lesser known (at least to me) - such as this iced-over pond, found tucked away behind a city maintenance facility off Morningside Avenue, just south of the 401:
Above the pond I stumble across what appears to be Toronto's strategic wood-pile:
Just on the other side of the 401 is another rather unknown water feature (unknown in that I don't know of its name, if it has one) - a stream that begins at Milner Ave, running north between Grand Marshall and Auto Mall Drives. It starts as just a trickle of a thing (though it's deceptively deep, as I discovered while crossing it), and you'll mostly have to take my word for it that it's there amongst all these reeds:
A couple of culverts and outfalls converge in one of the shortest stretches of any of my trips, between Sheppard Avenue and the driveway to another municipal facility. It's so short, in fact, that you could take it all in with a single picture (but you know me better than that!):
Past the driveway the stream-bed suddenly runs dry...when, off in the distance, a strange wall looms out in the middle of an empty field - behind which lays another culvert, from whence the water re-appears:
Stone bricks now pave the resurgent stream, which flows on into a thick wood, only to disappear once again at the foot of a towering vertical megalith:
Up across a pathway, then down into a deep ravine where the stream evenually meets up with the Morningside Creek:
I now head northeast, up the Morningside, to where the creek takes a dramatic plunge:
Out, at last, into some familiar territory as I eventually meet up with the old Metro Zoo monorail, which I encountered on a previous trip to the Rouge River:
Just south of where the monorail crosses the creek I find what looks to be an abandoned animal stable (either that, or something to do with ice cream?):
A last little bit of the Morningside remains before it enters the Rouge, where I take my 6,000th photo for Google Earth (6,340th Panoramio pic, for those keeping score):
Not one to retrace my steps, I'm now left with a bit of a problem as to how to get back to street-level. I'd already done the rest of the Rouge heading east, and I just came all this way from the west. Fortunately, my map showed another nameless little stream heading south into more unknown lands, from right around where I was standing. Locating it on the ground, however, proved a little difficult. I found what seemed to be evidence of it heading back under the monorail line...:
...but then I quickly lost it again in this large, frozen marsh:
At last, I pick it up once more and follow it home - or, at least, to the back of someone else's home in the Ecopark Gate subdivision: