The Hike

Before coming up for vacation I’d told Mother I’d try two things she wanted me to do. She wanted me to go for a walk with her and to play pickleball. She is an enthusiast of both these activities and would do both daily if the weather permitted. For the walk I agreed to go on a hike of Triangle Hill. I had very little recollection of it but figured a walk in the forest would be interesting. Today seemed to be the day we’d take it on. I was up ahead of seven and made sure I had a nice breakfast. Today it ended up being a couple fried eggs thrust between some English muffins with sliced cheese and a dollop of sriracha ranch dipping sauce. Still good.

I was told the adventure would begin at nine. One of Mother’s walking buddies was coming along so we had to account for her travel time. She walks and bikes over fifty kilometres everyday, so she could set the pace for us. I heard the story about the parking drama. There is an older lady that lives on the township road into the start of the trail. She has no fewer than five signs asking people to park on the south side of the road and she has a desire for people to park next to the highway for no reason other than her desire. She is way over-reaching on this and has been for years. She comes out and yells every single time and will hear no reason. Even from the authorities. She’s smarter than everyone else, one of those, you know the type. I’m glad I was warned. Before we left I chatted with the Chef until I was told that nine actually meant 8:45. Soon we were off. The woman freaked out as predicted, we waved and carried on, mainly ignoring her. I snapped a number of pictures for you, I tried to caption them rather than explain them all in detail. More below.

The initial ascent. It doesn’t look as steep as it was. Got the blood pumping early.

The first pond we came to, rocky shore to walk along.

The trail to the top. Another steep stretch followed by regular incline.

Photo credit: Jo D

Good view from the top. Can see for miles, lovely in the summer.

The trail back seemed to be more treacherous. We took the more difficult one.

This is Little Spring Lake actually. I had to sit down for a rest at this point. It was the only real stop.

This is the opposite end of the lake from the sign. Would be great to fish with a canoe, assuming there is anything in there.

Second pond. Home to seven turtles, at least. We saw seven for sure and two more suspected. Too far away to confirm.

Birch stand was pretty to walk through.

I was pretty gassed from the steep up and down sections. It was like doing stairs. You can see from my FitBit output that there was a lot of up and down sections. I think we climbed all three sides of the triangle as we made a circle around the hill. It was a nice forest walk but really showed me I was out of shape. I’m glad that I only needed to do one stop to catch my breath. The climb was underplayed from the start, as was the distance but it was fun. I won’t do it again tomorrow though. It will be interesting to see how my legs recover. We had lunch when we got back, leftover chicken in sandwiches and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. After that we just rested, we being the dogs and I. Mother went about her business. I did help her fix some settings on her FitBit and checked her Mini, it was too old to work anymore. We watched a bit of TV and a couple movies. I think I tried to nap at one point but it didn’t take. My parents took off to a greenhouse mid afternoon so I watched the end of Mine. There was some collaboration for dinner that went off the rails but in the end we had some tasty asparagus risotto and some cheeseburger crunch wraps. These lacked a crunch element in my opinion, mainly cheese burgers that used wraps rather than buns. My wheels are turning on how to improve that.

The one film we watched after dinner was the Rhthym Section on Prime. It was excellent. Big T bailed to go watch the Jays in his room with the little dog. When the movie ended, so did the day, I was again going to sleep around ten bells.