aldo,

google says it's about 5 hours 50 mins to Mattawa from Toronto: http://www.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&a...mp;t=h&om=1

Tack at least another hour onto that to get to Brent Crater, which is probably best reached from route 17 east of Mattawa. There's a sign on 17 for the turn off, going west anyway. It's a 32 kilometer dirt road, well-maintained, so you can go 50 k/h + on it. I also saw a pine marten crossing that road, so it's serious wilderness. The Ottawa River is beautiful too, and there are plenty of accomodations along 17.

But lots of biting flies in those woods, don't say I didn't warn you.

konch

"...The boggy areas they grow in (like most or all carnivorous plants) are very nitrogen-poor, so they want PROTEIN to get the nitrogen from the amino acids."

Well that's what I figured too, and even stuck my finger in one of the pichers to see if it would react. It didn't bite, or try to close its top, and the cup shape seemed to be for water retention as much as anything else, yet they were growing in a very wet place. I was mystified as to how limestone could produce nitrogen-poor soil, since a basic regime tends to be better at retaining nitrogen and calcium is a basis of basic soil. Can limestone also produce acid soil? If this is unusual does the bowl shape of the crater have anything to do with it, e.g. by preventing normal runoff? I didn't visit any non-crater bogs in Algonquin Park for comparison, though the website does point out the existence of other unusual species there such as the bulbet bladder fern, known to be associated with limestone.

Anyhow, apologies -- I know this is off topic except in as much as it might be interesting to consider similar cascades of consequences in Victoria -- unless of course we find some carnivorous plants down there!

konch

Greetings Areologists,

I've been lurking here for a long time now. Last week I happened to drive by Brent Crater in Ontario and got a quick digital camera mpeg of it I thought some of you might enjoy given the recent postings about terrestrial craters. Warning, the video file size (1.75 megs) and the images linked below are a bit large for some bandwidths.

Brent was formed by an explosion equivalent to 250 megatons of TNT 450 million years ago, and is approximately 4 kilometers wide.

You can read more about Brent here: http://www.valleyexplore.com/walk/ottawa/brent.htm

google map
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&am....162939,0.22316

The video was taken from the observation tower shown in the valleyexplore link. I also braved the black flies of the nature trail down to the floor of the crater and saw some composite rock the brochure said formed at the base of the cliff when the ancient crater cliff wall eroded. The crater floor included some strange alien looking plants. The impact excavated to a limestone layer giving the water on the crater floor an unusual chemical profile, and I suppose that might explain the plants.

As you may imagine, the whole experience made me think of Victoria.

Thanks to everyone for making our Mars adventure so much more interesting and enjoyable!

Konch