[2023-05-04] Rice Lake
We've been going to Bruce Pit, a dog park in Ottawa's west end, for 16 years. And yet, until today, we had never walked around Rice Lake, which is a stone's throw from Bruce Pit.
It was a lovely place to meander, with well groomed trails looping around the lake and eventually connecting to Bruce Pit. The site appears to be a well-kept secret, as I couldn't find any information online to link to, though you can see it on the Bruce Pit entry in Google Maps.
The first thing I noticed on our walk was a picturesque wooden bridge. As we stopped on the bridge, we could see an egret and a nesting goose atop a beaver dam in the lake. On the other side of the bridge, we watched a lone goose, paddling placidly upstream, and eventually making its way to the beaver dam.
As we continued our hike, we came across two Adirondack chairs. This would have made for a peaceful place to pause except that the chairs were still wet from the morning's rain. We pushed on, eventually emerging on a path lined with pine trees that ran parallel to Bruce Pit. We entered the dog park and made our way along what I call the boulevard (I've named many of the paths in Bruce Pit). Then past the doggie spa (a small pond where the dogs like to frolic in spring) and around memorial corner, where hundreds of dog tags have been affixed to the fence in memory of faithful friends who are no longer with us. We continued along pine grove, through the central area and back to our car.
We will take this path again, I'm sure.
