Well, Kristine and I got lost today. Really lost.
Seriously. No, not aboard the Elsa but on perfectly dry land.
First things first.
It was a nice calm morning, and we went ashore to say goodbye to
Montague Harbour. At one part of the
park, there is a stretch of low land that’s wider than an isthmus but narrow
enough to walk across in a few minutes.
It is the home of a big marshy area, home to lots of wildlife. Not the stinky kind of marsh, just very nice
with a trail along one side. We took a
walk over to the beach on the other side and saw a little fog out there –
pretty unusual for this area.
Back aboard, we set our course for Princess Bay, on Portland
Island. Another Provincial Park. We came here last year for the first time and
only stayed for lunch and a hike, this year we decided to spend the night. It’s
a nice bay, gets a little crowded sometimes because the room to anchor is
limited but we found a good spot. Last
year, we were with Kristine’s sister Barbara and took a hike counterclockwise
around about half the island, then followed a trail that cut through the middle
to get back to where we started. This
year, we figured we’d go the other direction.
It’s a great trail, with views:
And it drops down to a great campsite right on a shell beach
that looks across to another similar beach:
This is where the getting lost part starts. At this campsite, there is a map that shows
the trail system.
We had started at the ? on the bottom and hiked clockwise
around to the red “you are here” star.
After taking some photos, we wanted to continue on that trail shown on
the map. We had a little trouble finding
it – it didn’t seem to continue where the other one left off, and there were no
signs pointing to where it might be. We
poked around a little and finally found it.
We thought. It wasn’t quite as
developed as the other one, but we rationalized that it just wasn’t as popular
and how nice it would be to have the whole trail to ourselves. We followed it for a while, and it got less
and less easy to follow. We had
misgivings. But we persevered. Finally we reached a point where we decided
it was just too hard to follow and turned to go back. Trouble was, when we turned around we
couldn’t even see where we had been walking.
It all looked like the same underbrush. We went a few yards in one direction, then another, then another. We picked what we thought was a trail and
went several yards until it ran out.
After a half dozen false starts, we literally didn’t know where we
were. It sounds silly, but we got a
little nervous. It gave me a new
appreciation for how people can get lost in the woods – you look around, and
everything looks the same in every direction.
We weren’t totally lost, of course, we knew we needed to go
downhill and eventually we’d hit the water.
But we had to start bushwacking through underbrush. To shorten the story, we made our way back to
that campsite (although not to the trail we left on!) and from there it was an
easy hike out on the trail we came in on.
But jeeze!
That was enough excitement for one day. Back to the boat for happy hour and a
barbeque.
Yikes! Glad you made it!
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