Caledon Hills Section - Innes Lake Road (31.7km) to Willoughby Road (16.1km) - April 20, 2023
Caledon Hills Section - Innes Lake Road (31.7km) to Willoughby Road (16.1km) - distance 15.66 km
April 20, 2023
We hike south and west from Innes Lake Road (the opposite way for a change just because we can). The weather is springlike - sunny with cloudy periods, with a wind brisk enough for us to keep our jackets on.
15 of us are hiking. Annette (leader), Laura, Lesley (photographer), Barbara, Steve R., Ron J., Peter, Sandra (sweep), Frank, Rita, Josie (photographer), Andrea, Steve K., Muris, and Doug (photographer and blogger). (About the blogging, Ken, our regular blogger and expert, is skiving-off somewhere, and Annette still doesn't know how to blog (and is proud of it). Barbara knows how to blog. She should have been leading this hike, but she switched with Annette. Wait! Why am I blogging ...)
Just as we start, Ron J. our esteemed botanist spots some bloodroot, a Spring Ephemeral. It lives quietly underground for most of the year but in the spring, before the leaf canopy blots out the sun, it sprouts, flowers, sets seed and goes dormant all in 2 months. Named after the red sap in its roots, indigenous peoples used its roots medicinally. It cures hemorrhoids!
Ron J. gets excited over some Marsh Marigold, a plant of swamps and ditches. It is seriously poisonous.
Rita and Frank near the intersection with Airport Road.
South on Airport Road ...
Briefly into the bush off Escarpment Sideroad ...
We stop for an early elevenses on St. Andrew's Road.
Briefly back into the bush south on St. Andrew's Road and then a meadow, paralleling the road ...
We rejoin Escarpment Sideroad and head west again. The platoon spreads out.
The tunnel under Hurontario Street!
The last stile. A final gratuitous detour through the bush, thanks to the Caledon trail captains and their warped sense of humour. In this series of shots of we demonstrate various approved stile-clambering methods...
Killed by blaze...
Abandoned wind pump just before Willoughby Road. We're almost there.
Now here's the thing. Above is the last picture any of us took on this hike. There is no photograph of several boots at the end, or even of one. Very slack! Even slacker, we were all so excited by Lesley and Steve R. completing the Caledon Hills Section that none of us took a photograph of their honour ceremony! Zut! I take full responsibility. Perhaps someone should fire me. (Note to Barbara (leader next week): let's do it again for them, this time with photos!)
POSTSCRIPT: As Steve K. gently tells me in an email, I have officially lost my mind. There was no section completion ceremony for Lesley and Steve R.! I was remembering the previous week when they did complete the Toronto section. Now, where did I leave that psychiatrist's phone number ...?
THE END
Comments
Post a Comment