Come Walk With Us on the Trans Canada Trail (TCT)

Today marked the beginning of a new phase of our hike across Canada. Looking forward, it seems like we have mostly left hiking trails behind now until we reach southern Alberta and British Columbia. There are a few exceptions in the big cities, but we will mostly be walking concessions, back-roads and highways from this point west across the prairies. We began this phase of our journey with a 38 km hike down the shoulder of the Trans Canada Highway today. Almost as soon as we headed out of North Bay this morning we ran into a snag. We walked across town, following Main St as the map suggested. As we made the run up to Highway 17 we realized Main St is closed, and the bridge is out. We had to backtrack 3.5 km to get on the highway almost right where we started.  This meant that before setting out on what was due to be a 30+ km day of hiking we had already trekked 6 km.  Not an inspiring beginning to the day. Like many things in life, walking the Great Trail ... er ....

Having begun trekking across Ontario in May of 2020 we had traversed 580 km from Ottawa to Durham completing Eastern Ontario and then 650 km from Durham to Orillia having hiked across the Greater Toronto region of The Great Trail! Next on our agenda was our venture through the beautiful Muskoka region from Washago to North Bay Ontario!    Having rested for a couple of days in Orillia we made our way on the regional concessions around the local water route past the community of Washago to the Great Trail trail head at Copper Falls.   As it had countless times since Newfoundland, the pathway once again dramatically changed signalling a transformation in the nature of the trail and our experiences as we continued northward to the town of Gravenhurst. From Copper Falls northward we traversed the rugged terrain of the Canadian Shield, or Laurentian Plateau, along a route that alternated between hiking along ridges of stone, descending to alongside beautiful lakes, to navigating