Trail Tools
- Alien safari gear (sunglasses and hat)
- Third eye (magnifying lens)
- Darkness tool per pair (bandana/cloth for a blindfold)
- Camera
- Adventure Journal
This is a beautiful scramble along the seashore. Though there are intermittent small paths, most of this is on the shoreline without a trail. It goes along sand and cobble beaches and along a tidal pond. Enjoy spectacular coastal scenery. Bring a camera and binoculars if you have them. This is a full day trip including travel time if you are from Metro Halifax or beyond.
It is far preferable to time this so that you are below half tide in the earlier sections as there is more life along the shore to discover and there are a couple of sections where you have to scramble up through the forest if it is above 2/3rds tide. Here is the tide table. There is lots of walking on rocky beaches, wear good shoes. Plan a good snack or lunch halfway through and spend time on the swimming beach afterward (it’s a great swim on a warm day if you do not mind cold water). Bring sunscreen, a hat and appropriate clothes (it is windy and cool here even in summer, and the weather can be much cooler and wetter than other parts of the province).
The park is typically open from Victoria Day through Thanksgiving, but this can change. Check the web or call for specifics at 902 662 3030 in the shoulder season. It has picnic areas, change houses, toilets, additional hiking paths and a large, sandy, unsupervised beach.
Take Route 107 from Halifax Metro and drive approximately 100 km to Spry Bay. The Taylor Head Provincial Park entrance is a marked right turn. Drive 5 km on the main park road, stopping where it ends in a parking lot.
Start on the boardwalk leaving the parking lot and walk 40 m to the kiosk on the left.
You are an alien from the planet Blicktar about to beam down to earth from your space ship. You’re on a safari scouting out this strange blue and green planet for interesting life forms. Record evidence of them for your official Blicktar safari report. Describe any strange creatures and their weird habits.
First, get on your safari gear and give yourself an alien name.
Now practice the traditional Blicktar greeting in case you meet strange life forms:
Report to your ship’s galactic transporter to beam down to earth:
From the kiosk, walk on the boardwalk 120 m to the beach. Turn right and walk slowly along the sand.
A strange blue liquid borders this rugged land. Search for exotic wild creatures. Look at the green flexible sticks coming out of the mound of sand on the right. They move like dancers, swaying back and forth. Their dance must be a greeting. You don’t want to be rude: do the Blictar greeting back to them.
Now look for signs of moving life forms in the sand. Draw any tracks you find in your Blicktar Adventure Journal.
Follow the sandy beach and continue as it turns into a cobble beach. Stop at the large rocks about 435 m from the boardwalk, part way along the cobble beach where the shoreline begins to curve.
This looks like a communications command centre for life forms. Look on the ground for heavy, round, whitish spheres with sparkles in them. The sparkles may be microchips for communicating to space.
Create the Blicktar “all is well signal” to send to your ship:
Now look for exotic creatures close to the water. See if you can find the tiny volcanoes (barnacles) on the rocks and study them.
Could there be life below ground? Dig deep into the cobbles to find out.
Search for life forms in the peaceful blue liquid and the green gunk floating in it.
From the command centre, walk 100 m along and across the cobble beach to the edge of the pond.
Look along the edge of this blue liquid for various exotic forms of life. Can you find tiny to small coloured spirals attached to the rocks? Investigate them closely. Check for small darting creatures and long, thin slimy creatures in the shallow waters.
Continue around the edge of the pond 75 m along a narrow strip of pond edge with trees on the left and the pond on the right. Stop just past a 4 m high rock face where there is a tiny path on your left curving around the rock face hill. Step in the path a couple of metres.
At higher tides the pond comes right up to the edge of the forest and you will have to make your way on small, rough paths along the shore for most of the 75 m to avoid getting your feet wet.
Check out the small green alien life forms covering the slope just past the rock face. Are they edible? Do they have white petals or red circles on them? They are beautiful. Take a photo and beam it up to your spaceship for scientific analysis.
A couple of metres past the bunchberry path is an old straight path heading away from the pond. Follow it for approximately 30 m until you come to the rocky ocean shore. Turn right and look at the rocks for the next 20 metres.
It sure is bright leaving the forest for the stone shore. There is unusual evidence of past fossils and ancient history in these rocks. Here are two things to look for but there is likely much more:
From where you came out on the rock, continue about 50 metres to a cobble beach.
Whoa! Check out the mounds of brown, purple and green stuff on the rocks. Get close in and give them a good sniff. Yow, what is it?
How many different types of things can you find here. An expert can find six. Create a display of one of each type on a rock and take a photo to beam up to Blicktar.
Could this stuff be useful on Blicktar?
Could this be used for rope? Where does this stuff come from? Why is it so tough?
Before you leave this spot, use the hard objects scattered on the ground to build a Blicktar signal tower on the highest point nearby. This marks your discovery.
As you move to the next stop, look for interesting earth artifacts such as sticks, smooth colourful objects (shells) and other exotic and interesting things. Where might these have come from?
From the far end of the cobble beach cross over an open area back to the pond edge. Follow along the pond edge 75 m toward a point of land. At lower tides you can stay on the pond edge and at higher tides follow small paths in the trees just above the pond.
After 75 m, just short of the point, you must go up and over a small hill for 30 m through the woods, descending back down to the open flats as soon as possible. From the flats go another 50 m and climb the stones on the back of a long cobble beach. Once on top of the cobble beach, turn left and go 50 m along the shore to a cluster of ancient, dead trees.
This area has thousands of hard, heavy, roundish objects. On top of them are many large and long complex shapes of interconnected white or brown things. It is truly beautiful. And there is this dark brown substance beneath underneath them. Yipes, there is nothing like any of this on Blicktar.
Take out your Blicktar Adventure Journal and find a snug and warm spot to rest among this Earth Art Gallery. Sit and do a drawing of some of the interesting objects and specimens around you. Watch for flying creatures moving across the surface of the blue liquid.
Share your drawing with others.
Move down to the shore and search for exotic artifacts on the rocks.
Walk about 200 m down the cobble beach until you see a mini pond to your right near a number of small trees, which are between the cobble beach and the pond. Go down to the pond side of the mini pond.
Blicktarians have sophisticated feeling sensors (fingertips) called ‘Grokkers’.26 This is another way to understand and experience planet earth, and it provides interesting data on exotic life forms. These feeling sensors are only activated in darkness. Here’s how:
As you continue up the beach, use your touch sensors to grok life forms without your darkness tool.
Continue about 200 m down to the end of the beach where the water channel enters the pond.
You can go no further and yet you have not catalogued enough exotic creatures as yet. On the ocean side, near the point, investigate the brown mounds of plant material in depth. Get down on your knees and uncover the top of the pile.
Do you see lots of small life forms hopping about. Try to catch one and examine it (they move quick). What does it look like? Are there other forms of life in the mounds? How many can you find?
Please give each type of creature a name in the Blicktar language (all creatures must start with the letter B).
Explore other mounds and see if they have different things in them. What value do all of these hopping things have here on Planet Earth?
Also look out for white splotches on the rocks? What are they? How and why did they get here?
Stay at the point.
This is the end of your exploration and it is important to mark your journey. Build piece of Blicktar Art to mark your furthest point of the adventure. Here’s how:
This is a good spot for a snack as you sit and enjoy your art gallery.
There is a limit to your time and provisions so you must return to the start where you can beam back to the ship. But first, throw a floating object into the liquid moving off of the point. Look at which way it is going and why. Where will your floating object likely end up?
As you retrace your path back to the kiosk, look for more exotic life forms along the way. There is so much to see.
Return back the same way that you came to the boardwalk leading to the beach. Stop at the information kiosk. Water levels will have changed given the changing tide.
Surely, intelligent creatures built this kiosk structure. Maybe they left a sign or hidden message on it. Search every part of the structure for a symbol plaque. Look in lower and hidden sections of it to find a mystery creature. Use the side of your pencil or crayon to make a rubbing of it in your Adventure Journal.
The plaque symbol is:
Congratulations, you have successfully completed your alien safari mission! Upload one of your favourite photos of your mission to the earthling photo gallery to show others what is out here.
It’s time to return to your ship. Do your Blicktar greeting once more, as it also means goodbye. Go back to the galactic boardwalk transporter, spin three times and beam back up.