Last week I turned 30. I am still the “the kid” in the group as one of our older friends pointed out in my birthday card. Another friend who thinks I’m perpetually stuck in my twenties had a moment of panic, “If Grace is in her thirties, what does that mean for the rest of us?!” I don’t want to grow up either, but I’m glad my student loans are finally paid off!
One of my dearest friends, C, visited me on my actual birthday for a hike. We ventured off the “beaten path” so I can’t say how many km we walked, but we were gone for 4 hours.
Our mini adventure started on the Aspotogan trail on the East Chester end (right before the turn off for Blandford).
C remembered Castle Rock, so we decided to try to find it, taking the first logging road on the right, but the trail was overgrown and seemed to end, so we turned back, not wanting to get lost. However, it did give me a chance to take this photo of coyote scat (we also saw bear scat, but I already have lots of pictures of bear scat from around my house so no pictures of that).
Coyote scat. Can you see the claw?
Then we took another detour to one my favourite spots by the river. It is a emerald green moss-covered sanctuary. No pictures will do it justice. We ate lunch here, listening to the river, and marvelled at a spinning “fairy cake” with tiny spiders for sprinkles. (C is the one talking about it being “the perfect cake-like formation” and I’m the one looking for and talking about blurry spiders. We have not lost our child-like wonder!)
Back on the main trail, as we neared the lake, I watched out for Bufflehead ducks. We saw two, a male and female.
Look closely, see those two white specks in the back? Those are the two Buffleheads. All zoom in attempts resulted in blurry photographs.
Further along we came to another logging road and decided to see if that would take us to the trail leading to Castle Rock. *It did! After a long, enjoyable, uphill climb through the woods (well marked with colourful ribbons), we eventually stood in front of the mammoth granite rock. Of course it ended up taking less than two minutes to scale it, but I did further rip the crotch of my old jeans during the climb (we didn’t choose the hardest part to climb because we’re not stupid—we didn’t tell anyone that we were going to Castle Rock because we didn’t know we’d end up there!).
Once atop, we took in the impressive views.
We got back to car just as the sun began its descent from the sky.
This hike is now on my visitor tour list. So when are you coming?
*Apparently we took the harder trail to the rock, the first road was the easy route.
