We woke up at 8 a.m. to a rainy, grey, morning. Not the way you want to start off your backpacking day, but it wasn't raining very hard so it wasn't too bad. Our tent was still dry and so was all of our stuff.
Besides, I had a new rain jacket this year. I got it as an award from work and I just love it. It is a Marmot brand jacket and normally I would not have been able to afford one like it; they are pretty pricey at about $250 or so. But let me tell you, it is worth every penny that they are asking for one. It is super light weight and the water just beads right off of it (unless it has been in the rain for a very long time, and even then you get damp but not really wet). There are zippers for air circulation and nice sized pockets. (If you do buy one, get one size larger than what you would normally wear because they are not designed to hold heat and you will probably want to wear a jacket or sweater under it).
We said good bye to Devin and Jasmine at about noon and headed on down the trail in a light drizzle of rain. Today we are headed to Islet Lake; about a 7 km journey. Not far into our second day we met up with a lady who was also headed to Islet. There are four spots to choose from at Islet and they are on a first come, first served basis, just like Rain Lake was. We talked to her for a bit and she said that she was hoping to get to the furthest Islet site because she had a much longer journey the next day so she wanted to cover as much ground today as possible.
We told her that we were aiming to get one of the middle sites at Islet. So, at least we knew who one of our neighbours would be tonight (and that we weren't competing for the same site). We said good bye to her and told her that we might see her again later if we passed each other again. Then we continued on our way to Islet Lake.
Again much of the trail is wide and flat through this section of the trail.
And old railway ties are still visible in the ground. It is easy to imagine yourself riding a train through here. All this scenery that we see up close would have gone whipping by the eyes of a passenger on a trail so long ago.
But there are also a number of beautiful spots as well. One of my favourites is where the sides of the trail become covered in light green deer moss. Heather told me that Devin had seen a "fairy orb" in this section when they had hiked it last year. I can see how a fairy would like to dwell here. So pretty!
Eventually the long, wide, flat trail stops at an old train trestle. From here on out the trail becomes more like the hiking trails we are used to. But this is a good place to rest and sit for a bit.
After resting up, we make our first down hill climb of the trail. It leads down to the creek and across a split log bridge.
From below the trestle, you can see what remains of the wooden frame that used to hold up the tracks.
And the view of the other side is that of a big log jam with left over sunken logs from back in the day when the logging camp was active here.
By now it isn't raining anymore and the dragonflies and damselflies have started to make an appearance. I have always loved the contrasting black coloured wings against the bright green body of the Ebony Jewel Wing Damselfly. The name is very fitting.
Along with the pretty insects, came the not so pretty insects. All the rain and muddy places had put out an open invitation for the mosquitoes to come out and have a feast. Heather doesn't like to hike with long sleeves and pants like I do. So she got the worst of the bites. She asked me "Don't you get hot wearing that?" and my answer was "Yes, but I would rather be hot for a few hours than to be all bit up with mosquito bites for days afterwards". So to each their own, I guess.
What likes a damp forest after a rain more than mosquitoes do? Mushrooms and fungi. And boy, do these trails have a wide variety of those!
They came in all manner of shapes and sizes and colours.
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Including one that looked like someone dropped a ball of uncooked bread dough on the ground.
And one that looked like a shiny copper ball.
There was a mushroom that made me think of Alice In Wonderland. All it needed was a caterpillar.
Oh wait... we had one of those too!
Naturally there were many different types of fungi as well.
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But my favourite was one that had orange and red swirls. It looked like it could be some sort of ice cream flavour.
We did a little more mud hopping across trails for awhile. Before we arrived at Islet Lake we started to get tired. We decided that if no one was on the first site, we would take that one instead of one of the middle ones.
However, there was someone already on the first site so we ended up getting the second site instead. We arrived there at about 3:30 pm. One of the first things we noticed was that the mosquitoes were not as bad here as they were on the trail.
The site itself was decent enough, but it wasn't one of my favourites. For one thing, you have to go down a steep hill to get to the water and there wasn't a good place to swim. Another thing was that the thunder box was up a hill. And after hiking about 7 km, the last thing you want to do is go up a hill every time you need to go to the bathroom.
Despite those draw backs about the site, the view of the lake was still nice enough.
Before we did any setting up of the tent or anything else, we just sat for a rest. Heather brought along a light weight, fold up chair that fits into a small bag. I used to think that she was crazy to bring along the extra weight and I had never brought one with me before. But before leaving Rain Lake, Devin offered to lend me his. I was going to turn him down, but then I decided, why not? So for the first time, I also had one of these chairs with me. I have gotta say that these babies are well worth carrying an extra pound or two! They are fantastic for when you are on the trail and want to sit and rest and there are no logs or rocks to sit on. They are very comfortable too. I was also thankful to have one later on during the trip when my back started to bother me one day. I may just have to go buy one for myself.
No sooner had we sat down to rest than a chipmunk popped out of a hole under a rock near the fire pit. The little rascal went straight for Heather's backpack and started snooping around in all the pockets and through all of our stuff. In no time at all he found the unfinished part of a granola bar that was in a bag and he absconded with it down the hole. We named that guy "Theivy".
A few moments later he showed back up again with his buddy, who was not as bold as Theivy was, but definitely was looking to see what he could find too. We named him "Buddy". We knew we had to keep a careful eye on our food while we were at this site. We could not leave anything unattended while those two were around.
Other residents of this site were a sparrow....
...and a toad.
Eventually we got around to setting up the camp. We opted for the tarp over the tent again because we had checked the long term weather before we left home and we knew we could be expecting more rain.
We thought that the tree we had our tent set up under was a pine tree from the look of the bark.
But then Heather pointed out that it wasn't a pine tree at all. It was an old birch tree! When you looked way up to the top of the tree you could see that this tree had leaves, not pine needles.
We noticed that someone had left behind some pots and pans and a grill. It always baffles us to see things like this left behind. I always wonder, "Did someone bring them all this way with the intention of leaving them here on purpose? Or, did they get this far and realize that they were too much weight to carry for the rest of their trip and so they left them? Or did they just forget them?"
We didn't do much that evening. We were too tired. We were even too tired to gather much wood for a fire. Instead we resorted to just making a small fire using twigs. It lasted just long enough to cook supper and then we let it go out.
After supper we were just sitting and talking and watching for the sun to go down, when we were surprised to have 2 visitors to our campsite. It was the 2 young people who had been carrying the blue food barrel together the day before. Apparently they were staying at the Ishkuday campsite that was not too far from us. Ishkuday Lake is no longer much of a lake due to the work of beavers and so we were told that you couldn't get water there. These two had come in search of water. We welcomed them and let them take water from our Islet Lake access. They filled up the bottles and containers that they had with them, thanked us, and then headed back to their campsite.
We went back to watching for a sunset. There was no real colourful sunset here. Just the sinking of the sun and then grey sky which turned to night. The mosquitoes came out again around 9:30 pm. So, we decided to put our food up in a tree and call it a night. Tomorrow we would be on our way to Weed Lake.
We went back to watching for a sunset. There was no real colourful sunset here. Just the sinking of the sun and then grey sky which turned to night. The mosquitoes came out again around 9:30 pm. So, we decided to put our food up in a tree and call it a night. Tomorrow we would be on our way to Weed Lake.
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