Eganville, Ontario is a com­mu­ni­ty about an hour and a half dri­ve west of Ottawa. It was also recent­ly fea­tured in an episode of CBC show, Still Stand­ing (of which we’re huge fans! :D) We were going to Ottawa to vis­it fam­i­ly and to see the Bon­nechere Caves near­by, and then we saw the Still Stand­ing episode so we decid­ed that we would stop in the town to explore.

But first, the Bon­nechere Caves! The fam­i­ly that main­tains the Caves offers dai­ly guid­ed tours in the sum­mer months into Octo­ber, and our tour guide was very friend­ly, knowl­edge­able, and quite ani­mat­ed :) He explained that the net­work of under­ground caves and tun­nels were carved out by the Bon­nechere riv­er. The walls of the cave were imprint­ed by the move­ment of the water.

See the sta­lac­tites near the ceil­ing of the cave?

Just across the road from the Bon­nechere Cave site there was a nice view of the Bon­nechere Riv­er, we stopped for pic­tures :D

We then head­ed to Engine House Cof­fee for lunch, because we saw it on Still Stand­ing :D It is a love­ly place indeed, roasts its beans onsite, stocks an excel­lent selec­tion of organ­ic teas, and has a sun­ny patio with cof­fee plants.

Since it was still ear­ly in the day, and if we drove back to Ottawa to wan­der around town we’d have to pay for park­ing, we thought we’d con­tin­ue explor­ing Eganville. We picked up a brochure at the Caves with infor­ma­tion about the geo-her­itage/­fos­sil hunt­ing trail at the Bon­nechere Muse­um, so we decid­ed to visit.

The friend­ly muse­um staff told us that the muse­um build­ing used to be the com­mu­ni­ty’s post office. It now hous­es a very well orga­nized dis­play of arti­facts from Eganville and area.

Admis­sion to the muse­um includes the geol­o­gy and fos­sil trail. Since Eganville is known as “the Ordovi­cian Fos­sil Cap­i­tal of Cana­da”, the muse­um staff let us know that fos­sils are rel­a­tive­ly easy to find on the trail (and we’re allowed to take one with us per per­son). She gave us a map and some direc­tions, and we set out on some unplanned wilder­ness explor­ing :D

There were signs along the trail direct­ing us to the “fos­sil pit”.

And we found the fos­sil pit! I think this was a hon­ey­comb coral.

We fol­lowed the trail to a cliff area where we could see caves from across the river.

There was also a trench that we could walk down into and look at the lay­ers of sed­i­men­ta­ry rocks.

All in all, we find Eganville to be a love­ly place for a day trip when one is vis­it­ing in the Ottawa area. We quite enjoyed it as city dwellers; it was away from busy urban cen­tres, with a love­ly cafe for a leisure­ly lunch or tea, and it’s got some relaxed (read: grav­el paths, board­walk and stur­dy stair­cas­es) wilder­ness exploring :)

Hope every­one’s hav­ing a good weekend!