I'm just getting back from a few days at Kejimkujik National Park. It was a pretty good couple of days filled with mountain biking, canoeing, camp fires and beers.
I'm sure most of us dreaded starting this out. Looking at the weather, it was supposed to be raining the whole week. But, we were all committed. We showed up Tuesday morning after driving 1.5 hrs to get there in the rain ready to be drenched for the week. Luckily, the rain cleared up almost right away after we arrived and magically held off for nearly the remainder of the trip.
We spent a good chunk of the week on the mountain bikes. The start of the park has many hiking/biking trails that make exploring the area quite interesting.
The first bike ride took us up along Mersey River to a small set of rapids and a bridge. Up and back it was around 24 km. It was the first time I've been on a generic mountain bike pedaling in quite some time as it's all electric biking for me lately. By the time we got back, I was really feeling it.
After the bike ride, a fire was in order... and some beers of course.
Here's a shot of my tent site. A cozy five person tent all to myself, complete with a fold up camping couch. No need to be uncomfortable if you don't have to. Since there were a number of us, we ended up renting a group camp site. It was nice to have everything cleared with some nice level tent pads, but I'm more of a back country camper at heart so it wasn't really my style of camping. It was still a nice little spot though.
Here's a view from the beach just in front of my tent.
And what could be better than waking up in the morning and hitting the 'brew' button on a personal coffee machine hooked up to a small battery bank. While others waited for their personal stoves to heat up the water for their french presses, I was enjoying my coffee right out of the sleeping bag.
Our canoe trip took us up around the main lake and up the Mersey River. I ended up forgetting my phone back at the camp so I didn't really take many pictures. I later realized I had my GoPro in my bag and took a few pictures when we stopped for lunch. It was a nice little paddle, although a little overcast.
The second bike ride took us along a few other lakes. We found tons of mushrooms and and this crazy tree growing on top of this rock. Unfortunately, some thoughtful humans decided to cut the tree down for its safety so it wouldn't fall over.
We eventually had to stop biking on the trail after we came across a number of fallen trees blocking the path. We were already 11 km down the trail so we were about as far as we wanted to go anyway. I'd be interested to head back out this way in the future to continue the trail. It went on for many kilometers along a number of little lakes.
Near where we turned around was a nice little back country camp site overlooking a small lake. I figure next year I'll look into getting out to these other secluded sites for a few days as they were only about $6 a night to rent and it was really peaceful and quiet out there.
We did end up cutting the trip a day short after that. There's a major hurricane headed for Nova Scotia as I'm writing this and most of us were itching to get back and start some preparations for that. Hopefully it doesn't amount to much, but if the power ends up going down for a few days, it's better to have everything ready than be scrambling to get things done during a storm.
