F.A.Q's or Things You Might Want to Know

Q. Why chose to spend a Saturday or two per month out hiking?
A. Well, aside from the personal considerations:

•  One's perception of life the universe and everything tend to slow down when hiking. It changes one's sense of scale and one's sense of place. If you feel you are moving too fast then there is nothing quite like hiking with kids to change this feeling radically. Plus, what with the sail's pace and everything, one tends to notice things. We've noticed raccoon prints, robin's eggs, hawks, herons, blue jays, a number of insects, including a very well camouflaged moth, fossils, dead cardinals (right across the road from the Organized Crime Winery) and the leg of a deer, not to mention live deer and, well, it is along list.If you happen to have a penchant for explaining things like geological processes and ecosystems  then hiking provides a beautiful outdoor classroom. 
• Hiking is inexpensive. Any equipment you need is likely either attached to your body or else lying around your house.  In some cases you may run into exorbitant user fees at various conservation areas. Note that these can often be avoided by parking your car elsewhere. In my opinion they also should be avoided because a $20 per diem user fee is crazy. There is no point in building multi-million dollar signs if everyone who might read them is holed up in the basement with a playstation.

Q. Why hike with kids?
A. We like kids.

•  Hiking is easy. Most people know how to walk. most have feet and shoes and that sort of thing so getting out and going for a walk that casually turns into a hike and sometimes into a really long hike, as in maybe you forget to read the trail re-route notices before setting out and 12k turns into 18... (just saying)
• The Outdoor Classroom is really fun. In addition to the flora and fauna and the rocks, there is also opportunity to address things like trip planning. Running out of water is no fun. Carrying everyone else's water is also no fun so you learn to carry a pack. You learn about layers. You learn about temperature variations over the course of a day. You learn that you really LOVE slooshies (freezies) and that a humidex of 38 is toothy. The same might be said about windchills.
• To have a connection with the  land one must, perforce, go out on the land. 
• There are a zillion places where hiking intersects with badge requirements for Scouts or Guides.
• Suppose you are out of shape, what with having had kids etc. etc. If you have a yen to get back into shape, slowly, then taking kids along is a great way to do it. This applies to many other sports such as roller blading, biking and skiing. No one, least of all the kids, is going to mind that you are not perfect at it and you'll get better as the kids get better. If one day they outstrip you and outshine you, well, then you'll still be able to call yourself competent and besides, no one said we all had to be perfect at everything. By doing things like this with children you build a bond and that comes in hand when children morph into tweens, teens and adults.

Q. Why the Bruce Trail?
A. The Bruce has a lot to recommend it.

1. It is a linear trail of over 850km linking Queeston Heights to Tobermory. It is divided into 9 sections. Each section has a badge. So, for each sectional end-to-end hike you complete you can apply for a badge. This gives a tangible record of progress. When the entire length has been hiked you can apply for an end-to-end number and a badge. For kids, and hey, for we adults too, this is very cool.
2. Since is very long you can see how far you have traveled on an Ontario road map and feel awed.
3. You can see the trail on satellite maps, much like the Great Wall of China, only without the deep historical connections.
4. That said, the Niagara Escarpment is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It is globally significant. It crosses at least 3 ecosystems and passes through the largest urban landscape in Canada.
5. It is the oldest and the longest footpath in Ontario.
6. The Bruce Trail Conservancy publishes an extremely good mapbook.
7. We're hiking with kids. Kids grow. This project might take 5-10 years and it'll be a thing that links those years with a sense of life well lived.

Q. So, if it is linear, how do you get back to your car?
A. The frequency of this question astonishes me. We coined a new term to explain. The term is: hopscotch the cars... Yup, simple really. On most sections there is parking or a road crossing every 5-10km's. So, if you have more than one car then you're set. You simply run both cars to the end or mid-point and then leave one there and come back with the other (s), depending on the size of your group. If you have only one car, well, I'll allow a bit of a problem there.

Q. Can you get lost on a linear trail?
A: Yes.

• There are side-trails that cross the Bruce. Also, there are the perils of chasing rainbows. The official trail blazes are white with a black background but occasionally you just get white ones. So, for example, let's say you have gone on ahead with the 3 year olds and the 7 year old and crossed over the 3rd Welland Canal and come to the 4th. Then you notice a ship in the bottom-most flight lock. The ship is pretty cool. Really, it is. A trip to the Welland Canals is highly recommended in my books.  
• You follow the ship up the mountain and you're on a bike path and there are white blazes and the world's longest train passes by. Presently, you notice that you are in Thorold along with the ship with the crucial difference being that the ship WANTS to be in Thorold.
• At which point you backtrack, seeing no sign of the rest of your party, and note that the trail did a turn of about 45 degrees while you weren't looking. There is mud on the trail and in the mud you see the prints of a dog. Probably the dog is yours and you are no longer in the lead but you have the 3 year olds so getting to the lead is problematic.
• At the 1st and 2nd Welland canals you wander over a bridge and then you hear your husband calling to you but don't call back because you think maybe you are almost at the parking lot. In fact, you are not and half an hour, after re-crossing the bridge to get back on to the main trail you find the rest of your party looking tired and somewhat worried. They are relieved to see you and immediately began calling your husband and friend to call off the searching which, by now, has gone from trail to streets since you husband back-tracked to the 4th Welland and did not see you, what with you having been tucked away on the other side of the bridge.
• It is widely agreed that the world's longest train prevented one end of the party from hearing the other because at that point we were actually very close only I was feeding apples to the kids as they stood on a bench around a corner and watched the ship.
• Which sort of bring us back to the previous question concerning why go hiking in the first place? It builds relationships. It's a jumping off point for conversations that begin: "I thought for a wild moment that maybe you had been kidnapped..."

Q. Do you have to keep your dog leashed?
A. This is the written rule of the trail and it comes in handy. My dog, for example, has issues with other dogs which makes leashing her necessary. On the other hand, supposing she did not have issues, there is a benefit to leashes. For example, dogs get thirsty. Dogs smell water. Dogs do not, as a rule, expect the water they smell to be at the bottom of a sheer drop into an emptied canal lock. 

Q. So exactly how sheer are the drops?
A. They vary. Also, some of them, depending on the season, can have water falling over them at a good clip. I, for one, do not envy Mrs. Balls her homestead.

•  In some cases you will have exactly the drops you'd expect. If you see DeCew, or Rockway or Felkers falls on the map then you can expect a waterfall. If you see little map indicators of a stupendous view then, yup, expect a drop. Grimsby Mountain was sobering in this respect as we suspect strongly that one of the benches is dedicated to the memory of children who fell.On the other hand, Grimsby Mountain also afforded a view of the spume from Niagara Falls.
• To negotiate the drops we have perfected the "grip-of-(anti)death" in which parent takes child and does not let go until the drop has been successfully negotiated. The "grip-of-death" is also deployed whilst crossing raging rivers, ice patches, glaciers, highways, and suspension bridges (not all situations apply to the Bruce). It is especially important if your child has oppositional tendencies and answers a "step away from the edge, darling," with a surge in the opposite direction.
• In other cases, you'll be surprised by the nature of the drop. For instance, when hiking through Hamilton I had a kid on my shoulder as we walked down a mountain access. I looked over and saw another well below us. Sometimes you'll find crevasses. Sometimes you'll find sinkholes. This is the nature of karst.
• Drops are not dangerous unless you actually fall off one. Keep in mind that limestone is layed rock. It erodes. Any more than 2 people near a drop ought to be called back. Kids generally get the whole visual cliff concept from a very early age but fooling around and/or tripping can present random results, some of which will be fatal.

Q. How do you manage food and drink?
A. Carry snacks. Carry water. Keep the heavy stuff in a car and park it where you expect to be around lunchtime. In the summer plan for luxurious picnics. In the fall prepare warm stews and chili and keep them in a crock pot or the thermal pot Val and Pam found for us. Bring fruit. Bring veggies. Bring biscotti. Oh, and in the summer keep re-fills of water in the car because no one wants to carry 15 water bottles. If you are in Niagara in August, buy a lot of peaches from the locals because these will be the best peaches you're likely to find outside of the Okanogan Valley.

Q. Suppose I do hike the Bruce, where should I start?
A. Well, that depends on your location really.

• It also depends on what you want to do. In our case, we decided on an end-to end and we began at Queenston Heights. This entailed about a 2 and a half hour drive to the trail head. We began at Queenston Heights because we had two 3 year olds with us. The Niagara section can scarcely be described as remote. We had plenty of coffee, end points, restaurants, drug stores, convenience stores, hardware stores and hospitals well on hand. We figure that when experimenting with new horizons it is best to minimize the negative side-effects of the Learning Curve.
• If you live near a section of the trail then doing an end-to-end hike on that section is another viable option. 
• If you plan to begin now, are in the pink of health and plan to end 15 or so tears later then going from Tobermory on down has much to recommend it.
• If you want to get a section down in order to engender interest in the others then start with the Toronto section. It is 50k or so and attainable in a season. Niagara is 90ish and Iroquoia a whopping 120 (give or take).

Q. Seriously? 3 year olds?
A. Yup - twins.

• Really, it isn't that hard. Get a good kid carrier though for an older kid. We like the Kelty carrier we inherited from my friend Colette the best. Encourage them to walk and then carry them when necessary. Eventually they will walk more than they are carried. Inevitably, you'll come to a point where slogging up a slop with a kid on your back nearly kills you. This is when it is wise to begin to phase out the pack. Pack gone, switch to shoulder carrying for short bursts and also the 1 2 3 SWING! trick.
• When we began this thing we all had sinus colds and even the 9 year old has his doubts. We did 7k that day and felt great. Since then we've had up to 4 other kids on board and none of them have doubts. In fact, they all like hiking. The twins, newly turned 4, can do 10k on their own steam and also do not trip over roots and rocks. They're at home out there.
• I hear many people tell me that they will hike or camp with their kids when the kids are "old enough". Trust me on this one, hook 'em while they are young. Get yourself, and them, into the habit while picking them up is still fun for you both.