Esker Lakes - The Trapper's Trail

 We were doing so good with the easy trails - when the map would say it should take an hour, it only took us half that time, even with Ryan- that I thought some of us could tackle a difficult one: the trapper's trail. 

According to the map, the loop takes 4 hours. So I thought it would take us 2, maybe 3. There is a trail going from the loop to the trapper's cabin that you have to walk back to return to the loop. At first, I thought that trail was part of the 4 hours. Why call it the trapper's trail if you don't get to the trapper's cabin!?

Keld still wanted us to leave around 8, in case it took us the full 4 hours. Since Julia got sick and Zack wanted to bike, it was just Kelden and I. We left from the left of the campsite, between lake Lallan and lake Panagapka (if you want to follow with the map.)

We made it to lake Gourlay pretty quickly and without too many problems, just a few trees to fight on our way.

From there, you can follow the trapper's trail to get to the cabin. It said only 1,3 km so we were pretty confident we had time.

It proved harder than we thought though. More trees on the way but it was also very swampy. It had rained quite a bit this week-end, the little bridges were flooded and we were getting stuck in the mud.

I was ready to give up! Especially when we could see the cabin, I thought we saw it, we're good! 

But Kelden was determined! So we kept going and we finally made it. That little trail almost took us an hour!

We went a bit faster on our way back. We returned to Gourlay lake and continued the loop, admiring lakes Seahorse and Roach.

Then, we arrived at the last turn on the map. From there, you can go to Thrasher lake or you can finish the loop back to the camping sites. It said it was only 2,7 kms to the end of the loop and we thought that, thanks to our little adventure to the trapper's cabin, we would indeed make it right in 4 hours...until we saw this:

This wasn't on the map so we first followed the bigger pathway but it didn't seem to go towards the camping sites so we came back and followed the trail. It turns out that both ways make it back to the camping sites but the trail gets out earlier, not at the site that we had previously thought we would get out and where Zack had been biking, waiting for us ;) 

So it took us a little over 4 hours and our feet were wet, but it was a great adventure !

Esker Lakes - Easy Trails

 There were three trails deemed easy in this provincial park, around 1.5 kms each.

The first one we followed was called the recreational trail. It said you could see moose, frogs and green warbler-finches. We definitely saw nice birds but we were too loud for moose. It's okay, we had already seen one on our way to the park. We saw a bear and two cubs on the way out. (I don't have a picture of the bears but if the picture had been anything like the moose picture, we're not missing much:)

The second trail we walked was called the lonesome bog trail. Keld's favorite.

The third one was the prospector's trail, right across from our campsite (you can see our truck and camper behind Zack.)

It was fun. Ryan walks better than last year but he still doesn't seem to like it...

Esker Lakes

 For our first camping trip of the year on this May long week-end, we decided not to go too far and camped at Esker Lakes.

I did not know what esker meant. For those ignorant people like me, here's a definition: 

1. a long ridge of gravel and other sediment, typically having a winding course, deposited by meltwater from a retreating glacier or ice sheet.

Now, we can look at Zack's picture again, admiring the eskers.

Since this was our first experience of the year, we got to try a couple of new things, like cameras for driving or a big tent to keep us warm and the bugs away.

As it was pooring rain on our way to the parc, we thought we would have to use the tent a lot more. Fortunately, the weather was actually pretty good and we were able to go outside (the beach with the playground was only a bike ride away) and cook outside too. 

We also went on most of the trails (I will post that later) but we enjoyed the camper as well. 

A great family time!