Shmanksgiving Weekend

It was Thanksgiving in Canada this weekend (long weekend - woo hoo!), and while everyone else was enjoying turkey with their families, Oliver and I took advantage of the emptiness of a place that would normally be packed on a long weekend - Lion's Head Trail.

Lion's Head Trail is one part of the Bruce Trail, which is an 80-km hiking path that runs through Ontario. Lion's Head takes up 18km of the Bruce, and runs along these spectacular cliffs overlooking Georgian Bay. It was neat to be hiking along in the woods, then suddenly come to a lookout with views like the one pictured (for more pictures, go here). And when we weren't peering down the steep drop of a jagged cliff, we got to enjoy the trees in the woods or walk along the bay. Always nice to change up the scenery.

This was also a bit of a special trip for me, since it was the first time I didn't worry about silly details like maps and reservations. I didn't have the time or energy to take care of either beforehand, so when we got to the start of the trail we just sort of winged it. The trail is really well marked and there are little maps posted everywhere, so I knew we'd find our way.

I wasn't so sure about a campsite though. There's one big site on the water, and I felt like I'd read somewhere that a permit was required... who has time to actually get a permit? Not me. Would the Bruce Trail cops raid our campsite in the middle of the night and make us leave? Probably not. So I decided not to worry about it. I was paranoid enough though, that whenever passing hikers saw our backpacks and asked if we were camping out that night, I got all evasive and shifty eyed. I didn't want to make our whereabouts too obvious. Maybe they were undercover cops, or maybe they were relatives of cops. We never got arrested in the end though, which is good.