07 August 2006

T-O-BER-MOR-Y ALRIGHT!

With another looooooooong weekend at our feet, Gord & I decided to ditch the city & head for beautiful Georgian Bay. The events of the trip are somewhat long & hilariously sordid, so I'm going to skim over most of them but here is a very short synopsis of our trip.

We started out early Saturday morning from my parents house in Hamilton (long story #1) With many stops & a bunch of last minute shopping, we were finally on our way. Way, way, way up the highway. It was somewhere around Mount Forest (a town with a sign we thought was pretty hilarious)

that I cast on for some Jaywalkers. I brought them for the soul purpose of being car knitting, so I didn't get all that much done on them. In backroad camping, every inch of space is precious - so my knitting didn't make the cut of what went in the pack.

After hours of driving we finaly arrived at Bruce Peninsula National Park. Our plan was to hike in from Head of Trails to Storm Haven--the overnight rest stop where we had reserved a campsite. The next night we were supposed to hike to High Dump overnight rest stop - 10 km away from Storm Haven. We were told that if we parked at Halfway Dump side trail we'd have a 'nice calm walk in'. Neither of us were prepared for what that acutally meant. What that actually meant was 5.3km of fairly rugged terrain. Mostly rocks, lots of climbing, and lots of telling myself outloud "It's okay, it's okay, I can *DO* this." At one point when we were feeling pretty beat that Gord reminded me of why we came to this particular spot:
There were almost tears, there was more sweating than I've ever done in my whole entire life, there was a lot of looking up at the rock we had to get up in order to keep on trail & saying "What the FUCK??" But we finally got to our site. What do two city kids look like after a crazy hike in the woods? We were all like "is there wireless up here or what? OMG guy, we should have made a movie of that to post on youtube!" um, we weren't actually like that at all. We were mostly just a stream of expletives with a few "this is awesome!!"'s thrown in.

Because this part of the trail is right along a very rocky cliff, the sites have these little decks to pitch your tent on, which I thought was pretty good because that meant that maybe the Rattlesnakes wouldn't get us. We weren't expecting to be hiking such a difficult trail, and really, neither of us had ever done this sort of thing before (except for my portage trip last summer which was not nearly as tough as this) so the next morning we decided to hike back to the sidetrail & see how we felt. Would we *really* feel up to hiking another 5km & then 7km back the next day - when we'd (meaning Gord) would have to drive 4 hours back to Hamilton & then take the bus back to Toronto & then go to work the next day? I hope it's needless to say that the answer was no. We didn't feel up to that. Not one bit. To be sure, the camping was lovely, but we most definitely learnt some important lessons. Mainly that *less* is *more*.

And also, I learnt that I love this man so much it makes me dizzy.



Oh, and because there are two little ladies who are very curious to see, here's the progress on my bpt sweater for my mother's christmas present. Turns out, with this one that 4th cast-on is a charm. It also doesn't hurt to have a knitting guru help you along.

6 comments:

Miss13 said...

Hooray for hiking adventures !
I love the pics, and never in my life was there a tent deck. I guess that's the states for you. What a pretty view ^_^ and a sweet guy to keep you company in the wilderness :)

The BPT looks so nice ! I love the yarn, I am sure your mom will love it :) Little lady 1 :))))

knittykat said...

Oh, I love your vacation pics---you are a braver girl than I! I'm a Hilton Camper myself ;-)

And your BPT looks wonderful! Your mom is a lucky lady. I think the colorway is very pretty!

I'm so glad you turned me on to the pattern!

Jessica McGann said...

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

Sam said...

I can't wait to hear the long version of this story.

dre said...

Oh, Nicole! Your trip looks so serene and beautiful in that sort-of sweat-and-tears kind-of way!

Join me Saturday night for free Gin!

krissy said...

hiya, i've been reading your blog for a bit...found it through glitter...but i've always been too shy to comment. but i had to de-lurk to tell you that my very first teaching job was in mount forest and i have to say that the sign is lying. it's really neither of the 3. (ok, well perhaps a bit high).