Hike #35 July 1 2021

I'm a full 3 weeks behind on writing about my Bruce Trail adventures, so this is going to be short and sweet. 

JC has just 25 km to finish the Blue Mountains section. Because he had started before I was invited to join him, I have a 14 km stretch at the beginning to do, but it's not going anywhere. 

This is a great way to spend "Canada Day". I'm happy to be out of Toronto, not near folks celebrating genocide. 

There are so many great fungi coming out for the season. 

We have reached the highest point on the trail via a short side trail and the vistas in this area are incredible. 

It's a long day, made harder by sections where we get turned around by lack of proper blazes. JC calculates that we average 2.5 km/hour on this hike and that is slow as fuck, so we blame the blazing and the number of times we need to stop and re-orient ourselves. 

When we reach the Scenic Caves portion, we stop for a sock change, which feels like having a new set of feet. 

We emerge into the Blue Mountain resort, where we find a posted sign with a re-route. We take the re-route and then hop back when we see a white blaze again, even though this means we are walking through the resort and getting odd looks. These last 2 km are the slowest because we can't find any blazes at all. We later realize that the re-route continued on the very busy road and we're glad we got followed the map, because the traffic isn't safe. 

We take a moment to enjoy the view of Nottawasaga Bay, inside Georgian Bay. 

All I can think about is how glorious it would be to go swimming, but it's a long day and we need to get back to his car, so we can go back to my car. 

By the time we get back to my car, the temp has dropped to 15 C and I end up driving home with the heat on, including the heated seat. I spent the next few days recovering from this 25 km hike even though we were tempted to head back out on Sunday. 

Stats:

starting near marker 42.5

ending near marker 67.3

total hiked today: 24.8

total Bruce Trail hiked since starting: 286.6 km (approaching the 1/3 mark!)