Trip Report: What a crazy day this was!!! The day started just after midnight. We met up at the car pool in Belle River to make the trek up to St Marys. But first we had to drop off our stash of food and water at roughly the half way point of the trail. We hid our stuff behind a tree and prayed that no one took it. Our recon showed us that there was not really options for us to refuel at gas stations or things of that nature. So lets just say our packs were heavy! We arrived at St Marys and started just before quarter after four. We ran some roads and it didn't take us too long before we were off of the road, and onto some different terrain. There were many farmers fields with uneven ground. There were many bush sections and unfortunately, the misquitoes were just unrelenting. There was also lots of trail where the weeds were very high. This made the trail hard to find sometimes. We had to really pay attention to the blazes to try and stay on course. All this difficult terrain meant that we did a lot of hiking. We took advantage of the road sections and made up some ground running. On the roads, we also got a break from the misquitoes which were driving us crazy! Casey had traced out a route on his phone which kept us on course(most of the time). We had to back track a few times. All part of the adventure! We made it to our refuel stash finally and ran into some amazing trail angels. They were a group just finishing up a hike. One of the fellows was the Avon Trail president. They offered us some bug spray and they also took our garbage from our resupply. We received some good tips from them and they wished us well. It was a real morale booster for us! They were the first people we had seen on the trail all day.
Our packs were full again and we were ready to tackle the second half! We were hoping the trail got easier, but it didn't! More farmers fields, more waist high weeds, more misquiotes. We knew the tougher our day was, the more we would be relieved we would be to get to the end. And even though it was really tough, we really did enjoy ourselves. We just kept moving and made up some time when we could. We even went for a run along side some friendly dairy cows. The actually ran with us! It was a fun moment in our journey. We realized that we would not be finishing in the time we wanted. It didn't matter though. The lesson here is never underestimate how tough the trail can be. It really did throw a lot at us. Our feet were wet the whole day! We finally finished up our last trail section and we knew it was just roads to the finish. My aunt and uncle agreed to pick us up in Conestogo and give us a ride back to our vehicle in St Marys. We rounded our final turn and we saw them. What a relief! We got to the rock and took a few pics. What an amazing, tough day! I'd like to thank Larry and Carol for helping us out and giving us a ride. They were great and had water and snacks for us too! They made the logistical part of this adventure much easier on us. We appreciate it!!! And thanks to Casey for driving up and spending all the time creating the route on your phone. We couldn't have done this without it. Time to recover until the next one!