I love my friends and family!
Hiking in Charlevoix, way back in June, was lots of fun. The weather was perfect for hiking, not too hot and only a sprinkling of rain when we started off on Saturday. We didn't have to fight off the bugs too badly either. Tim had bought us some trekking poles and I am definitely sold on them. They made the climbing bits much easier to undertake and helped on the descents too. The group (there were 9 of us) ended up separated in two, with the slower, picture-taking, enjoying the scenery, catching our breath, having conversations crowd bringing up the rear. But all was good since we had the evenings at the refuges to socialize with everyone.
Oh, yes, the food...We certainly did not go hungry. Our trip was a 3 day hike with day 2 being the longest, at about 14km, I believe. We were staying in cabins with no running water and we had our gear carried from cabin to cabin so quantity of food was not an issue. The first evening's meal was prepared by Stéphanie and Olaf, consisting of chicken fajitas in vast amounts. Day 2 , again, did not see us go starving. We started with breakfast, courtesy of France and Julie, made up of French toast with candied apples, sausages and bacon.
Everyone pitched in that evening to help Maya make a bean and avocado salad, the perfect entree to delicious chicken mole which was served with corn bread. And can you believe that we had cheesecake for dessert too!
Tim and I served breakfast on the Monday. We had made 2 varieties of waffles at home, banana chocolate chip and whole wheat nut, which have a very good crunch factor.
Stéphane and Geneviève were responsible for lunches , supplying us with rolls, cold cuts and cheese for each of us to make our own sandwiches in the morning before beginning our hike.
We got back to town on Monday afternoon and spent Tuesday doing some shopping, having a nice lunch at Café Passion in St-Lambert and then had Tim's friend Kelly over for supper. We discovered something new while shopping at Loblaws and tried salmon sausages. They are quite tasty although some are of the opinion that they have a weird, unexpected texture they're not sure about.
Wednesday morning, we met up with Catherine, Eric and Vanessa in Mercier and then drove on to the cottage in Mountain View for their first visit there. In the afternoon, we went for a pleasant stroll in the woods at Paul Smith's Visitor Interpretive Center and then visited their butterfly house. Evere wonder what mating monarchs look like???
We pulled out the charcoal bbq from the garage and had some tournedos and more salmon sausages with corn and salad for supper.
The Colby-Critchlows made their way home via Plattsburgh on Thursday while Tim and I stayed on until Friday. We'd brought our mountain bikes so we tried out the Hatch Brook trail where we'd been previously swarmed with bugs when we went with Heidi. The bugs weren't anywhere near as bad as last time. We just had to contend with a few wild turkeys and a very territorial hawk.
On Friday, before heading back, we tried making our way to High Falls with our bikes but the trail is not meant for biking, no matter how serious you are about it. We ended up walking our bikes on and off when the going got tough and then finally gave up and left them in the woods just before the Falls.
So, I'll end this here before you lose interest and I'll hopefully be back soon with another post!
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