Feast of the Mosquitos: Rideau Trail Day 11 – 07A to 07E

Date of Walk: Saturday June 22, 2024

Total Distance: 18.83 km 

Total Time: 4:19:34

This walk started out fairly easy with on McAndrews road, lulling us into thinking the day would be easy. We then veered off into a complete mud-bog flooded out ATV trail. Lots of slow delicate stepping and trying to avoid getting completely mudsunk. Oh did I mention the mosquitos? Already at this point we knew it was a feast day for those little bloodsuckers, rising up in swarms as we disturbed their watery nurseries. Listen, we use a lot of bug repellent, but you just cannot compete with a population that out of control! Anyhow, after getting mud logged and blood sucked, we got back on the roadway for quite a bit, making really good time for awhile. Once we got off the road onto the “ridge” trail, things were back to normal. Thankfully this part was not nearly as wet/flooded as the previous one!

Big shout out to the private land owner and the Lions Club of Westport for their awesome sections of well maintained trail behind Westport Sand Lake. Coming down to the Lions Beach we were really impressed, and decided we did indeed have it in us to continue on to Spy Rock. Of course, we realized then again, as often happens on the Rideau Trail – what comes down must go up.  I’m not the most pleasant about uphill walks, but Bryan kept me motivated enough and takes all my complaints well in stride — especially today where there were not as many ankle turning rocks/roots in the path 😉

The last part of our walk across the top of Westport Pond to Spy Rock is not evoking many memories….oh, except for the 87,582 mosquitos we encountered. All joking aside, we didn’t see much wild life today beyond mosquitos, frogs, and snakes – what can you do. Somewhere along the Westport Sand Lake/Westport Pond we found ourselves off trail and had to backtrack fairly significantly to find the trail again…when we found it, we also found the largest Rideau Trail sign in the woods yet pointing where we were supposed to go — the main photo of this post is that sign. How did we miss this?? I don’t know, but clearly a LOT of people miss this hence the giant sign. I think being on a semi-well walked trail lulled us into a sense of complacency.  The view from Spy Rock is, not surprisingly, amazing. Looking down over the town and all its Churches was really neat. We walked down into town and took a picture looking up at Spy Rock from the first building we noted on our picture from the top – it looked a lot farther away than I expected! What an awesome lookout. Next time, we will start back there and definitely take one car, bribing local friends for pick ups with treats and company of course!

We will leave the story here – another amazing day. I totally didn’t wrap things up with a key disaster requiring an emergency pick up from friends, followed by locking my keys in the car. Did I mention that some of our best friends in life happen to live 10 minutes from Westport???….I am beyond lucky, and definitely in favour-debt for awhile!!