 Third weekend in a row now of hiking 27-33KMS/day. Easy peasy now. For the next two days, we tackled the second half of our Iroquoia Bruce Trail end-to-end. By the end of this weekend we will have hiked 192 KMS total in seven days of hiking. That’s 70 KMS from Caledon Hills end-to-end + 122 KMS from Iroquoia end-to-end. I think we can be proud of that – sore muscles, achy knees, bruises, black toenails and all! Home base for the next two days was the Mohawk Ice Rink. This is where we would be walking to each day. The most awesome thing about this particular meeting point – is that it had a washroom! Hikers rejoice! Not only could we go before we got on the bus, but it also gave us a place to go and change after too. As someone who is truly not a fan of doing nature’s call in nature, this was a big ol’ Bonus. This picture (above) was the view from where we started the day’s hike. Same place as the previous Sunday – Syndenham Look Out. We weren’t the only ones there that morning. Many folks were there, coffee in hand, to watch the sun rise. It had just come over the horizon about 15 minutes before we got there. Quite spectacular. I had to stop right away to fix my slouching sock and that put us at the end of the pack, as usual. But you know who else was at the end of the pack – you guessed it, the Sweep. Again. Oh goody, today’s lesson: patience. We finally got ahead of the sweep (at least we think we did) after the first rest stop, which had a washroom so suddenly all seemed right with the world again. Honestly, you never realize how amazing washrooms are until you’re on a trail, with other hikers, with nowhere to ‘go’. Today we walked west and southward around the corner of Lake Ontario. The trail would take us through residential streets (Dundas, Hamilton), across highways (via pedestrian bridges), along graffiti painted alleys and through some incredible conservation areas and by waterfalls. Kind of one of those days that had it all – including sun, cloud, rain and even hail. Yep, hail. Crazy day.  My least favourite part of the day was the rocky terrain because it’s uneven, slippery, wobbly and generally a pain on the ankles and knees. It also slows your pace too, at least for me it does. I’m looking at this picture and wondering, why am I smiling?! Most likely I was cursing under my breath. I suppose it’s classic escarpment after all it was formed out of bedrock, and other geological things that I can’t profess to know anything about but find quite astonishing. Despite my hatred for the rocks in those moments on the trail, I really do think Mother Earth has created something spectacular when she made the Niagara Escarpment. I’m guessing that she didn’t think humans would be hiking it a million years after it was formed. More on that here. The nice thing about doing an organized hike like this one, is that it’s just day hiking so it wasn’t necessary to carry more than a day pack – a pack with just enough space to have snacks, water, small first aid kit, and place to put your extra layers, if and when you decide to take one off. That’s one really great perk of doing an organized end-to-end – no need to carry too much. And they have snacks at the rest stops too. One last picture of that amazing escarpment looming tall over the trail – one more day to go! 
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