17th Hike - Boyne Valley Provincial Park

This one is a jewel! It is a non-operating park, with only hiking trails....but what a great hike indeed! We have done it several times before, when the kids were younger, but it had been a while!

2008 Rachael, Alyssa and Rebecca atop Murphy's Pinnacle.

This time, we came from Highway #89, not Prince of Wales Road as we used to. Of course, this made the hike around 5x longer than we were used to as well. 

The trail started off quiet and tranquil. With no leaves on the trees yet, we were able to see many things that normally we don't get to see (like nests in trees). 

As we followed the trail north towards the pinnacle, we encountered some ... ugh ... ice and snow still left!

Maybe by mid-summer it will all be gone?

Soon we came to the Boyne River. In this area, it was shallow and clear, and absolutely gorgeous!

These bridges were fantastic, and apparently added lovingly by volunteers.

From here, it was quite a hike uphill to get to Murphy's pinnacle.

We then headed east until we hit the Boyne Valley Side Trail.

This took us to the 1st Line, and eventually brought us back west to join back up to the Bruce Trail. If you look closely (very closely) in the next picture, you will see the deer we saw.

They are little blips a little to the left of centre (this is an iphone, after all).

At one point, our path was completely blocked by fallen trees. It was like walking through a maze :).

After completing the loop, we headed south back to Highway #89.

16th Hike - It's Spring Again!!!!

It's been a mild winter here, but unfortunately we were not able to take real advantage of it due to the injury of my knee. On the last hike I injured it pretty severely and, even after a couple of months of physio, I find I have to wear a brace to do any real hiking. However, with the warm spring weather (It was +21°C here yesterday), we were able to get started again yesterday.

We started on the 30th Sideroad in between Hurontario Street and 1st Line EHS.

This was not a particularly forested area, it was quite open. However, a few weeks ago, we had a terrible ice storm in our area. Our street had a lot of branches down, so we knew that we would encounter quite a bit of deadfall in the bush. What we were not expecting was this:

If you look carefully beyond the first set of trees, you can see that there is a huge area of trees with all the tops off. The storm brought every tree in that place down.

As always, the view was beautiful. 

With spring comes muck and Scruffy ends up with some very dirty paws!

Still a little bit of snow hiding out in some areas.

We returned back to the car on the 2nd line EHS.

The best part is that we have now completed 2 full maps out of the book....only 40 to go :)

14th & 15th Hike - Mono Cliffs

It has been a while since we have posted anything about our hikes. First, to catch up....

December 6, 2015:
We made it to Mono Cliffs Provincial Park. For this beautiful hike on a gorgeous winter's day, we were accompanied by our daughter, Rachael, her husband, Luke, their baby, Judah and our son, Joshua.

This was the first time using the "Judah-pack" to carry Judah. It was a huge success!

As a family, we have hike the Mono Cliffs many, many times. It is always so enjoyable to be here.

Poor Judah, though, just could not stay awake.

The winter sun made for a beautiful hike.

And some nice family pictures :)

The next hike, I went alone on December 15, 2016. I started at the 25th Sideroad, Mono, and headed into the north of the Mono Cliffs Provincial Park. It was pouring rain when I started, so I took my new umbrella and was on my way. 

This ended up being a very long hike. However, the weather was absolutely beautiful, you would never know that it was December 15!!!

 The weather was so beautiful, I was wearing a t-shirt!

However, I re-injured my knee as I was hiking. I was so grateful for the umbrella that ended up being my cane. A car never looked soooooo good :)