Sat, Sep 30 2006 - Backus Woods (View Original Event Details)
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Another weekend and more rain... Your president forgot to set her alarm, so she learned she can be up and out the door in 15 minutes. She wasn't the only one who was running late - there were more than a few relieved phone calls when I assured them that I was still on my way
We shuffled off to our cars and headed out to Tim Horton's and it took us all a lot longer to get to our destination. Some of us had to stop for gas, some had to take their carpools on a bonus tour of Brantford - Jim's car got to sample the local brantford coffee pub life - some went for a bit of off roading - luckily the girls in Gerry's car kept him from going too far down the path. We eventually ended up in the right place. Hobbes and Rocky introduced each other and immediately decided they'd be best friends forever.
We had a few drops of rain on the way, but it had stopped and off we headed into this lovely specimen of Carolinian forest. I picked this hike specifically because it featured such a large area of forest and it was outside of the usual Bruce Trail hikes. It was definately a route less travelled. We had the entire forest to ourselves for the most part.
I'm not sure if it's a vegetarian thing, but our two vegetarians - Elliot and Karin - were very lunch focused so I made sure that we could stop at the first clearing. Unfortunately for Karin, Rocky took advantage of her unprotected lunch and grabbed half her sandwich. A lesson to be learned, Rocky watches unprotected food carefully and pounces on it as soon as he knows your attention is focused elsewhere - usually for TOCers there is always some interesting conversation going on. Rocky really couldn't keep from getting in trouble today - he had Rob's number - stealing his walking stick, tripping him up and then curling up next to him in the car - wet fur and all!
The rain started to come down, so we headed off to the Backus Heritage village, an pioneer town that was basically shut down, but an opportunity for the dogs to run, or for some people to sit, or take pictures. Elliot scoffed out our so called "Heritage" buildings, being from England, but I'd like to point out that our chinese gals were fascinated even though asian history goes even further back than western europe. However, Elliot was enthralled with the maypole and enlisted several people to skip around the maypole with him.
On the way back, we decided to take the Flood Plains trail or what we figured was the flood plains trail as we had learned by this time was that the maps were not detailed, and the trails not well marked and that I had lost my compass. But we hadn't gotten lost...yet - until the trail just disappeared - or went through the river. either way we had lost our direction. The dogs were convinced the trail went through the river and were happy at the prospect of swimming to find it, but that idea didn't quite fly with the rest of us. We took a vote - go back and find the other path or bushwhack our way through the forest and find the path -we were convinced it was somewhere "in that direction". Everyone went for the bushwacking option. And this is the best part - following an animal trail through long grass meadows and mushroomey undergrowth, we were able to experience the forest in a way that is not normally available. We entered an area of pine trees that made the scenery look like a faerie land - or as many observed "Narnian". It was a magical looking area, like an enchanted wood. We eventually made our way and caught up with the second path after about half an hour, and got our bearings such as they are. For the rest of the hike, we relied on Karin and Stan's instincts to get us back to our cars. I consider myself to have an inner compass and I lost my bearings in parts, and other members were completely turned around and convinced they were walking in circles. But even if we did walk in circles, we all agreed the hike and scenary was awesome and all too soon we found our cars.
Gerry told us that he was going to stop at a peanut shop near Simcoe, which prompted Elliot to ask if Gerry was planning on going "nuts". Some of us decided to meet up back at the Goose as usual, while others had to go home as it was getting late. Despite the threat of rain and the grey skies, it was a fun outing through an atypical setting
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