Penn Lake Park Campground, Marathon, Ontario, Canada
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take delight in you with gladness. With His love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. Zephaniah 3:17
Today was another long hike. We traveled 11.25 miles round trip to see a roaring river and cross a suspension bridge hovering 75.5 feet above the stretched-out waterfalls below.
Up and out by 8:15am, we drove back to Pukaskwa National Park via a ‘back road’ that was unexpectedly Jeep worthy!
Beautiful fireweed field!
On the way, we passed through the town of Heron Bay.
Many of the buildings looked like this – – without the flowers. : (
It’s long been established that when we hike a one-lane trail, I lead the way. Unless there are spider webs strung across the path.
Today there were webs.
I started the trail in front . . .
I can take a few. There were more than a few. There were loads more than a few. There were hundreds. (It was obvious that we were the first on the trail this morning!) And my hero swung his hiking stick around, attacking every one of them for me. There were so many, silk was billowing off the back of his hat, like a veil in the breeze.
We passed through a former prescribed burn area from 2012.
It’s growing up nicely!
Interesting!
Still along the “Fire Trail” as they call it.
It’s early in our hike.
Hattie’s Cove
This is the spot!
And then the mosquitoes began attacking him. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I was more covered with my long pants and long-sleeved tee, plus long hair to cover at least the back of my neck. He endured the double battle for an hour, before admitting defeat. The Deet went on, and I added some to the backs of my hands and exposed neck. (Although they still managed to get under my rings and bit the top of my head!) And we continued on.
Look! A roll!
Actually, it was some kind of mushroom or fungus, but doesn’t it look like a roll??
And he stopped swinging.
I assumed the spider webs were gone, but when I said something, he replied, “No. My arms just got tired. They’re just going across my face now.” Those of you know me will be surprised by this, but I felt so bad for him that I offered to go first for a while. He refused. My Superhero!
For my part, I endured the loss of gallons of sweat rather than offer my body as a sacrifice so the pesky little buggers could live another day. I had the ability to remove my long sleeves because I’d dressed in layers, and I was also able to unzip and remove the bottom portion of the legs on my pants to make shorts. But I didn’t.
Over the years, I’ve reconciled myself to God’s purpose for spiders. I suppose they eat lots of bugs and I will admit, that some of them even make pretty webs. But why, God? Why did You make mosquitoes? What possible purpose do they serve other than to spread disease and hurt people?
This was a pretty area!
Had it been in Florida, we could’ve expected gators, but we’re not, and there weren’t.
No bugs here!
Well there’s a surprise!
A beaver dam! It was big too!
Back into the woods we go.
Ugh!!
And now, you get to see how I climb down these rugged trails!
Not very gracefully, I can tell you that!
But I get it done!
Ahhhh . . . .
Two hours in, and we’ve found a lovely resting place!
It’s actually a primitive campsite.
Lucky for us, no one was camping.
That’s where we were sitting – – right there on that strategically placed log.
Time to move on . . .
Bear scat!!
And it’s fairly fresh too!
That’s at least evidence of bears, but we didn’t see anything. Not that we really want to on a narrow trail . . .
in the middle of nowhere . . .
We believe this is some kind of locust shell.
Doesn’t look anything like the ones we get in Ohio!
Smile!
You’re on candid camera!
Bugs aside, we found this trail less interesting and definitely more difficult than the 17-miles at Sleeping Giant. At least it was more difficult for me. I think because Sleeping Giant was flat – up – and flat again. And there were plenty of places to claim a reward (viewing areas). This trail was constantly up and down, and there were very few rewards along the way. It wore on my old bones. I sang a lot in my head, in time with my footfalls.
This is how AllTrails represents this trail.
See what I mean? Up and down and up and down . . . .
But their mileage is off a bit. We think it doesn’t take into account that you have to hike the Fire Trail first to get to this specific one.
There it is!
We made it!
For some odd reason, walking on this bridge didn’t bother me at all.
In order to see through the g’rating, I had to put my phone’s camera lens flat on the bridge.
Making use of our selfie stick.
Hard to do on a narrow bridge, with a narrow river.
Since we’d seen no one on the trail, we thought sitting on the bridge for lunch to be the perfect setting! There really was nowhere else. But unfortunately, a pair of girls came when we were about halfway through. ☹ We had to get up so they could enjoy the bridge. I understood the necessity, but I wasn’t happy about it . . . All that hiking and we can’t even sit and enjoy lunch! Bah humbug!
After the girls left, and before we moved on, Blaine went searching for a good vantage point to take a picture of the bridge – while I took evidence of him sneaking around the fence. : )
Nice picture!
We broke up the return trip into three one-hour sessions. With food offerings as a reward.
After the first hour, we stopped at the ‘sitting place’ we had enjoyed so much and ate an apple. In keeping with the less-than-perfect direction this day has been going, there was already a couple sitting on the log. We had to find a rock.
Isn’t that pretty?!
Different view from our rock . . .
We were able to wait them out so we could take a quick peek again.
Beautiful!
After the second hour, we stopped at the large open area where Blaine had applied his Deet and ate a chocolate chip cookie while admiring the clouds.
These look like little pine trees, but they must be some kind of ground cover . . .
Look at the building clouds!
The final leg . . .
Back across the marsh we go. . .
By the end of the third hour, we were back at the Jeep enjoying the last cookie. 😊