The IceMan!

It has been well over a month since I last wrote anything here. When last I wrote I was speaking of Hiking trails in Ontario. Don't get me wrong I love to hike. However I like the seasons that we get in Ontario and even as I wrote that post I was looking forward to some of what Washington just got! Yes, snow! Snow, glorious snow. You can ski on it, snowshoe in it and it just seems to make the winter worthwhile. Well if you live in southern Ontario, I don't need to tell you, but the snowblowers have had an easy winter of it. I have had my shovel out once, before Christmas and we got about 4 inches of wet slush that promptly froze solid. Hardly a speck since then and most of what we had did melt. I say most because what is still here is now ice, and any trails that you attempt to hike are more along the lines of skating rinks. I took my boys out for a short jaunt to Stephen's Gulch Conservation Area today. It was nice to be out in the woods and it wasn't as bitter as it has been some days. However the trail conditions made me leary of the older one slipping and falling hard, on the trail, and the sled we got the litle one was sliding all over, as well. Jake seemed to think it was great fun, especially when his older brother was doing the pulling!

The trail was truly icy as the next photo of Isaiah shows. Something like YakTraks are a definite suggestion if you are out on the trails in this area at the moment.



On another outing earlier in the week we took a walk down the Bowmanville Creek valley and found a different sort of ice! At some point in the last few weeks the Bowmanville Creek has jammed up somewhere, perhaps under the 401 bridge, and flooded its banks. In doing so it deposited some huge ice chunks all over the forests beside the creek. The paved trail that follows the creek was quite impassable due to large areas of ice chunks jumbled together to make footing treacherous. It was however neat to look at and Isaiah liked playing at being a Polar Explorer. A few photos of the Bowmanville valley this week!!


Although the photos don't really show them some of these blocks are two feet thick and ten feet long. I wouldn't have wanted to be walking down this trail in the midst of the flood!
AND FINALLY here we have my own little version of support for all the athletes competing in the Olympics out in Vancouver this month. I know the Inuit wouldn't think much of my effort, but hey, the kids got a kick out of it, and that is what counts. Go Canada Go!!!

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