Rob-n-Hild, oot and aboot eh? Sorry - 2022

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Riding Mountain National Park

As we have done a few stops, we are doing two nights in our yurt in Riding Mountain so today was a chance to do some more hiking. The problem is that we are really in the shoulder season just now - as the winter has gone, but left a lot of snow and a general watery mess on the trails - as we discovered yesterday. Even many of the smaller roads are closed so our available trail-heads were somewhat limited.

We picked a trail-head called Brulé - as reminder of one of our favourite lookouts in Gatineau Park: Étienne Brulé (who we refer to as Creme's lesser known brother). The goal was to reach Grey Owl's Cabin (a separate, longer story) which was a decent length walk and which we expected to take us a few hours.

Sadly, after an hour or so of Legolas/Gimli again, we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retraced our path again to just complete a 5k loop - but even that had taken us an hour and half. We even had to modify Legolas/Gimli to include Boromir style - where one person slogs through a knee/thigh deep drift and the other one follows in their wake! Again - should have brought/bought snow shoes...

We did make it to Kinosao Lake for a photo session including panorama view.

After this somewhat disappointing walk came another disappointing drive to see some bison. There is a population of these nice shaggy-looking beasts here at Riding Mountain who spend their time between a winter exhibit and a summer enclosure. We had already been informed that the road through the park was closed, but that the - longer - route back out of the park and round to the other side was still open. Or so we thought! After 30-odd km of rather muddy/slippy gravel track we found that the gate was closed and when we got back to the Park and asked, they informed us that the road was flooded from both directions now. Hmmph.

But by then the rain was coming down in rather more than the 'occasional showers' that had been forecast so we figured that a relaxed afternoon in the yurt was called for. Well - Rob had to do some work and Hild did the dishes.

That is exactly what our holiday is about - energetic when needed and "going flop" at other times.

May/June 2022

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