Well, looks like the Charbonneaus are well on the way to hiking the Bruce!Yesterday we started where we left off at the 7km mark by the train tracks in Fireman's Park and we ended at the 26.3km mark on Merritville Highway just behind Brock U.
That's 19.3km done in a day! Hoorah!
Hi-Fives all around!
So, in keeping with the rules of a Bruce Trail End-to-End, here is our trip log.
Now, as I mentioned last time, we had learned some lessons on our first 7km journey and we decided to put those lessons learned into practice. We hope you learned those lessons with us and we hope you enjoy this part of the Bruce with us.
Here we go!
Saturday, August 13th we woke up at 7 (Kattina a little later, but shhh) and started our day with a colourful breakfast of fresh strawberries, blueberries, and some apple cinnamon oatmeal with soy milk (I know! I know! Soy milk gives you
he-boobies...whatever man...it's delicious!).
We took a quick inventory of our pre-packed packs, got our water out of the fridge, and hopped in the Camrymobile!
"What did we bring?" you ask! Good question! Let me tell you.
Now I knew going to the 7 was taking a risk of falling under the Curse of 7. What's that?! Well the Curse of 7 is a very real thing on Speedvale Ave in Guelph. What happens is you go in for a very simple purchase; a Slurpee, a Charleston Chew, a bottle of Gatorade and inevitably there is a senior at the only available cash register who is checking no less than 11 lottery tickets. Now luck would have it where this senior wins with about 4 of these tickets. With the winnings, the senior buys more tickets. The senior will then check these tickets and the cycle goes on and on and on...for like 15 minutes...the Curse of 7.
Now this day, I narrowly avoided falling under the curse as I was in front of the man with the fistful of tickets.
Next stop, Shopper's. Yep, I needed a new knee brace. After a quick stop there, we were headed to the highway. But wait, where's our note pad? Awesome! We left it on the desk at home. So for the sake of the Trip (B)log we had to go back.
We quickly drove home and headed for the highway, again. This time, we checked traffic and we knew we were in the clear. We left Guelph around 8:50am.
Mumford and Sons...pumping (Get the album,Sigh No More)
We arrived in St. Catharines at Tim Horton's to meet our hiking buddy for
the day. Ladies and gentlemen, Jon Warner.
Jon is a new friend of ours who recently started working at our church in Guelph. He's a good dude and he likes Egg McMuffins.So we picked up Jon and parked his car at the end point of our hike.
From here we were headed to Firemen's park. On the way, Jon led us through a tunnel going
under the canal. It was AWESOME!
Once we arrived at Fireman's Park and hit the port-a-potty we were on the trail! It's 10:56am. The sun is shining. The first thing I noticed as we entered the bush was the cicadas weren't as loud as last weekend.
0.3km - We find an old rusted out car. Now the rules state we're supposed to leave the trail cleaner than we found it by taking out all garbage but I mean seriously, a car?! How the frack did it even get in there?
As we continued we observed a few differences in the terrain and found it to be a bit boring. We started along a lot of road sections and saw lots of dirt bike tracks. We walked by some sewage settling lagoons with waterworks employees doing their thing. Here the conversation was theology based. We discussed the newest pop Christian literature and shared our opinions and thoughts on the subject in question. While we walked calmly along the lagoons, there were frogs galore hopping on the path in front of us. One of the coolest things was all the grass hoppers on the trail in front of us. They were hopping everywhere. It was kind of like Moses parting the sea except we were parting a sea of insects...still cool though...
4km - We walked over the QEW pedestrian bridge which was amazing! I noticed at this point that our buddy Jon was leaking his love juice all over. Now before you call the police for that statement, I should clarify that the brother sweats a heart shaped pattern onto his shirt when he exerts himself. We dubbed it Love Juice.
4.1km - We saw our first ever live cicada! I heard the buzzing really clearly beside the trail and with eyes peeled was able to spot the little guy buzzing away on a young tree. I was able to snap a few of him before he crawled away. Shortly after we found this guy we came to what the Reference calls the Screaming Tunnel. Naturally, we felt the need to scream! J-Dub and I belted it! It was pretty awesome. I mean, how many people can say they screamed in the screaming tunnel? Actually, there's probably tons of people who could say that...whatever.
The tunnel came out at Warner Rd and headed left along a vineyard and some pear trees. I always find the Niagara Region really neat for all the things that grow in the area! It's an awesome place for growth. Just over a kilometre of road and we were back in the bush. Almost. "*GASP* a heron!" says Kattina as she slowly scurries to the side of a pond! "Where?", say I, now following closely, camera in hand. As we get closer we see it! But it's a statue of a duck...close baby. So close.
While we were walking this chunk of the Trail, Jon got to sharing his engagement story. The story is one of awe and wonder and learning through failure and being violated at the border. The end of the story taught me a valuable lesson in that good ideas and big plans take just the right amount of time to go smoothly. If you go rushing into something unprepared, you'll likely fall short or hurt others along the way. The potential consequences of the shenanigans Jon was involved in at the time of his engagement were certainly sobering, but the
big lesson for me was one about shortcuts. Shortcuts are easy and convenient but in the end, you could be missing a big and important part of the journey. Pretty timely lesson I'd say.
6.5km - We stopped for a snack on a log now dubbed The Snack Log, where we had celery and peanut butter and listened to the rest of Jon's story. A few nasty switchbacks later, we were at this excellent old brick building owned by the district's school board. It was white and had like 5 chimneys coming out of it! We entered the forest again and walked along some intense rock formations with some pieces that had fallen off the Escarpment. We also found another cicada shell an a tree in here!
As we came out of the woods to cross yet another road, we noticed a sign by one of
the stiles. One part of the sign said 'beware of flying golf balls'. Nice. We came out to a golf course where the new game was to guess Jon's middle name. We knew the initial was D and we were on the scent.
- Drew
- Dean
- Denny
- Donald
- Dennis
- Dwight
- Dirt Bag
- Dylan
- Derek
- David
- Dexter
- Dickie
- Deli
- Delroy
- Dartanion
- Devon
- Dejonda
None of these were right of course, but Kattina finally nailed it when she guessed Doug! Really it's Douglas though. FYI.
So we continued on through the golf course until we found this really cool river running beside the trail about 30 feet down. It was in a man made channel. It took us some time but finally we figured out that we were looking at the Third Welland Canal.
As we got to different parts of it we found something
unique each time. I think we came out about four times and the first time, we found an apple tree that we could actually eat from! It was delicious. Or bitter, depending on how you see it. We also noticed there was an old truss in the water down below. Now Jon swears he saw a giant fish swimming about but I have my doubts... The second time we came out, we saw a second rusted out car! It had come down the embankment somehow and was just never removed I guess. The fourth and last time we came out we saw two HUGE pipes going under the road. The way they were situated kind of reminded me of a gigantic double barrelled shotgun. It was pretty neat.As we walked away from the old canal, the most recent one was in site! We walked past a GM plant with turkey vulture sitting in the front lawn...hmmm...
12.1km - We got a great view of the canal and the giant vessels that make use of it from the Glendale Bridge where we stood for a little bit before continuing along the Fourth Welland Canal. The cool thing about this bridge is that it gets lifted up about 40 feet if there's a boat that needs to go through! It was neat to stand under and look at all of the interesting machinery involved in that.
As I was saying, we continued along the Canal and realized that we were walking up a lactic acid explosion of a hill! We got to the top and noticed we had run out of blazes...hmm, we went back down the hill and realized that there is a very sharp right turn to keep you on the main path. Kattina was impressed. Moving on.
14km - We walked through this next section of trail which was mostly uphill and once we got to the top, we stopped for a lunch and a little game of catch where the trail meets Merrit St.
We leave from here feeling re-energized and ready to finish strong. We soon cross a little bridge and head up yet another hill. At the top of this hill we find an Eagle Bridge where we discovered Zach Charbonneau Falls. Jon Warner thought it appropriate to name the newly discovered man-made waterfall after the one who discovered it. You can find the good news in his Twitter feed (#Jonwarner82).
We came out of this forest into a little suburbia and followed the road side trail which met with another road and led us past gas stations and fast food joints and a mall...(Are we still on a trail?)...and a flag salesmen.
16.6km - We stop at a Tim Horton's on Tremont Dr. and a wonderful supervisor named Cindy was extremely kind and even put ice in our bottles! Give that babe a raise, Tim!
From here we had a ton of hill to climb! It was the WORST! We basically walked through a pretty well-to-do neighbourhood talking about horrible it would be trying to bike up that kind of hill. We made it to the top snapped a few shots of fire hydrants and kept moving. Shortly after this I realize that the GPS app I bought for $1 is crap. It just stopped at about 11km and I later realized that the darn thing was way off in measurements! All of our stats for the day were garbage. Luckily Drew was able to give us an old GPS of his to use for future treks.
We got through a short bit of forest on Glenridge and emerged on the Merrittville Highway! This was our end point for the day. 19km conquered! Now all that was left was to get back to the car.
We made it back past Brock campus, McDonald's (blessings and peace be upon it), and a Tim's and into the hotel parking lot where we parked.
All in all, it was a day for success. I know Kattina was a hurtin' unit near the end; what with all the hills and all. My legs were finished. Jon was doing just fine...or was he? We persevered to the finish line for the day.
If you were to ask me how the day went I would probably tell you the best part was the challenge of walking 20km. The scenery and the trail were pretty lame and even upsetting at some parts. I mean shortly into the hike, we noticed about 10 oil drums just sitting in the bush. They were rusted through and there was a black sludge on the ground around them. It's upsetting enough to realize the Bruce Trail passes directly in front of multiple burger joints and gas stations. But to walk through a forest with 10 oil barrels and two cars just sitting there to rust and pollute. It's downright shameful. I found it irritating to go "hiking" and walk on cement 30% of the time as well.
Now it's interesting because I would've loved to skip this part of the trail, but going back to Jon's engagement story, which is a long one. He tells a good story about how corners were cut and details missed. These details and cut corners could've cost him a lot more than they did. In reality mistakes made can often teach us hard lessons. We grow from mistakes. In reflecting on this story, which I hope you hear one day, I understand that the road is narrow and long. The long narrow road has no shortcuts. The long road is long for a reason. The long narrow road is filled with gruelling switchbacks. From here we see where we once were from a different perspective, rather than running up the steep hill just to look back and see all the parts of the trail that we've missed out on. After this journey up the Bruce Trail, I don't want to look back and see that I've missed the good stuff. I want to know I did my best in the thick of it.
Let's continue on this journey together. It will be difficult. It will be a challenge. But we will grow in and learn about ourselves.
Thanks Bruce for showing us some of the bad stuff; it makes the good look that much better. Until next time Chief.
Zach + Kattina + Jon
xoxo
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