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All About Max, Surrey Parks

Sunnyside Acres Urban Forest

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Sunnyside AcresToday we took a walk in a park called Sunnyside Acres Urban Forest in South Surrey, basically in White Rock. It was a really cool park, with nice trails, and a walking itinerary provided for you at the main parking lot. The site was logged early in this century, but has been naturally re-forested, as opposed to being re-planted.

Sunnyside AcresThe trees are quite enormous, and offered a wonderful natural walk through the trails. There are lots of paths that have numbered sign posts on them, and each of the sign posts corresponds to a pamphlet that you can pick up at the entrance. It tells you what might be growing there, and what to look for. It is a very well signed park, and really quite a nice experience.

Pam and MaxPam was quite impressed with the size of the ferns! They have a wonderful vibrant green, quite different from a lot of other ferns growing around the Lower Mainland. The color is a brighter, lighter shade of green. It was quite striking.

Sunnyside AcresAlso pictured here is a trillium! It’s quite late in the year for the trillium to still be in bloom, so we were quite surprised, but pleased to see one! We had been in Tynehead Park the other day and walked up Trillium Trail, but there were none left in bloom. Sunnyside had a Trillium Trail as well, and here was the last bloom of the season! Nice!

All About Max, Surrey Parks

Tynehead Regional Park, North Surrey

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Serpentine River, Tynehead ParkTynehead Regional Park is a 260 hectare park in North Surrey. It includes a protected salmon hatchery, an off leash dog park, wide open spaces with picnic tables, public restrooms, and lots of trails though some of the coolest forest that Max and I have cruised through in a long while. The Serpentine River winds through the park, and it cascades all over the place. It chirps and laughs and tinkles all through the park. You hear it flowing over the rocks, under the bridges, and over the flat lands. In the fall it is packed with salmon returning to spawn.

Max in TynedheadThere is a trail called Trillium Trail, which in the early spring is covered in trillium flowers, a flower of the lily family. Canadians of course, know that it is the official provincial flower of Ontario but it is also the official wildflower of Ohio. It’s a delicate flower, that can be seriously harmed by picking the bloom. It is protected in many places. Another interesting thing about the trillium is that it is germinated by ants! The ants take a sort of pod back to their nests, and the seed is contained within the pod. They eat the pod and discard the seed!
Viewing platform, TyneheadMax and I climbed Trillium Trail which meanders up a steep embankment, over which you can see the Serpentine River snaking through the forest hundreds of feet below. There is a log fence to prevent you from falling over the cliff. As we neared the top of the ascent, there seemed to be a viewing platform that poked out over the cliff. It actually surrounded a large tree, about 30 feet off the forest floor and it was basically a tree house! It’s a very cool structure!

Trees in Tynehead ParkWe didn’t get to the off leash side of the park – in fact I didn’t even realize there was an off leash park, but we’ll get there soon! This park is definitely worth another visit. There were lots of trails we didn’t explore, but we will! There were stumps of huge trees that had been logged many years ago, and you could still see the notches cut by the loggers in order to climb the mammoth beasts! Awesome trees – awesome sizes… Sad to see them gone.