We started our exploration of the Rouge Valley today - and have probably seen up to 1% of the valley by now. See this link if you want some info on the Rouge. Or perhaps this for the trails. We only saw the Rouge River on this trip - not the Little Rouge Creek.
So we started out near the Toronto Zoo around Meadowvale and Sheppard, just onto Twyn Rivers Drive (from the Welsh it seems - Twyn). It started out with a fairly open area and path.
We already knew that the area was known at 'Glen Eagles Vista' so were expecting a great panoramic vista of the valley. Not quite. However we could see a trail winding its way down into the valley (see below) so we took it.
It was a welcome change from the 'asphalt path and carefully maintained' look of many of the places we have walked, and it was a beautiful day. Heard lots of birds chirping and saw a raccoon (not as big as the inner-city ones😀) and a rabbit.
Nice open woods. Took this photo to document in case we got lost as we knew each tree had its own unique 'fingerprint' and it would be easy to find us through CSI technology commonly shown on TV!
Crossed over the river on this old tree trunk (or possibly on a bridge just upstream)...
and came upon a quite new-looking BBQ just waiting to be used!
At times our path was blocked by impenetrable barriers - each more impenetrable than the last.
The final tree trunk was over 2 feet off the ground but we navigated it successfully.
The trip wasn't without fear and the feeling of being watched by otherworldly beasts though. First we ran across this:
Which was probably just raccoons having fun with out-of-town tourists, but then later we realized something spooky in the following picture.
At first I had taken it as a picture of a nice little waterfall and was going to then point out that it's actually coming from a big sewer line. But later when I looked at the picture I saw something in the sewer pipe (expanded view below) that made me realize that we were being watched by something possibly of extra-terrestrial origin. If I had known at the time I would have jumped into the Rouge and covered myself with mud to deceive its probable infrared vision (per Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator). Later realized there is camouflage you can get for this very reason! Didn't double-check what the large pile of bones was beside the pipe.
Took another picture of trees just because they were so photogenic.
And then it was time to gain some elevation to get back to the van. And back for the other 99% of the valley some other time(s).
I loved this walk!
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