My Bruce Trail Blogs

Saturday morning, we started way too early for my taste. Especially so, considering that we had all only got home at 2am last night. Everyone that was hiking today had gone to see Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, starting at 10:30pm for 2 hours and 40 minutes. And then we took the bus home. Great movie, though, so it was worth it... but my body was killing me for a few days after this week's 14.9 km hike.

For starters, it was colder than any other hike we've done so far. And that didn't help. But at least it wasn't raining. Well, not today. But the rainfalls over the past several days made certain parts of the trail extremely muddy. And this week's trails were rather rocky - a combination of the larger, mostly flat and rounded but porous rock that we could walk on, and the smaller, more angular rocks jutting out of the ground at odd angles that we had to walk around. All these rocks made this part of the hike particularly hard on the feet and legs. Plus, there were a lot of ups and downs on today's hike. Not nearly as steep as the first few weeks - Thank goodness! Just a lot of them.

Also, because Karen, Mike and I were usually well behind our fellow hikers (I stopped once in a while to take pictures, and we generally didn't walk quite as fast as they did), we didn't take as many breaks - or for as long - as we needed to, so we tired more quickly over the length of the day.

But near the end of the trail we came across another group of people - adults, I'd say in their forties - who gave us a little sugary pick-me-up to get us to the end. By that time, my balance was getting pretty bad (thank goodness I had a walking stick to lean on), and I was no longer picking my feet up very much, so I was stumbling more. But the candies were just what I needed to keep my energy up and finish the hike. A huge thank-you goes out to those people for their random act of kindness. :)

There was some very beautiful scenery in this hike - we came across sections of woods that were literally filled with Trilliums, and the view from the top of some of the ravines/bluffs was gorgeous! We also came across some interesting structures today - a couple of tepees, a rock cairn, and a well-made treehouse. There were a number of small creeks today, and a few smaller waterfalls/springs (one natural, and one not-so natural, but nice to look at anyway).

Near the end of today's hike, we observed something that we thought was rather unusual - there were several trees growing near a small waterfall/spring, and the entire area, including the trees, was completely covered in ivy!

Continue on to Hike #6