It’s 7pm and we are both tired from a good hiking workout today, 19 km covered on three different trails. The trails were all uphill and down hill with many steep sections and spruce bogs that needed to be crossed using fallen logs. We are hiking in Prince Albert National Park where we arrived yesterday for five nights of camping with six days of hiking. Yesterday we hiked 13 km, mostly around Waskesiu, the beach, and various shorter trails with a final hike to the lake in the evening to watch the sunset.
This morning on the drive to the start of our hiking we stopped because of a bear and her cubs. I managed to get a decent shot from the side of the road with the bears just inside the edge of trees just about forty metres away. I left the van door open in case I had to make a run for it – you never know with bears, especially mothers with cubs in tow. From what Maureen could see, there were three cubs. As they moved deeper into the forest, they soon became too difficult to photograph, so it was on to our trail head for the Spruce River Highlands Trail – 8.5 km long though my pedometer read 9.5 because of shortened steps, especially on steep descents. It took us three hours including a stop to change socks, eat some fruit and stretch out in the sunshine.
After time out for our lunch, we then walked the Freight Tait Springs Trail which was in the book at four kilometres. The problem was that there was no marker to signal the end of the trail and we kept on walking so that in the end we covered another kilometre and a bit, going up a faint trail, crossing another boggy spot before realising that we had walked too far. End result, we covered 6.5 km before arriving back at the van. The old, faint trail is just over 29 km in length so we could have gone on and on looking in vain for some end of trail marker.
We then headed back towards Waskesiu only to stop for another roadside animal photo opportunity, a young white-tail fawn. I was literally only about 10 metres from him before he turned tail and headed back to the bush where his mother was waiting. We stopped for a short hike to a tower which we then climbed before heading out to the Shady Lake Trail of almost two kilometres. Though it was a short trail, it was well worth the stop. More photos and then we drove back to our campsite, for a shower, supper and now, relaxation.