Date of Walk: Sunday November 3, 2024
Total Distance: 17.96km
Total Time: 3:10:13
The day before we took this walk, we visited the makers market in Merrickville and then drove to find a suitable parking spot. Google Maps navigated us handily to the 13C marker. Once we turned off Richardson Rd., towards Gilroy “Rd.”, it was clear that Google was a bit nutty – this road was an off road ATV track not suitable for vehicles. We were driving Landy though, so played it out a bit before turning back – why have the Defender if not to explore like this? The next day, we left Landy near the Richardson Road junction with a note and contact details, and took the Jeep back to Smith’s Falls to start out.
The first section of this walk along Matheson Drive was pretty flat and quick being a fairly not-busy paved road. We saw a couple of beautiful farm properties, and some leftover halloween decorations. The next stretch to 12F was a lot busier with quite a bit of traffic. A lot of new development in this area, including a couple of interesting barn conversions.
As we approached where the 12F waypoint is, we caught sight of this beautiful red tailed hawk that crossed our path and roosted in a tree to our left. He was gorgeous. I tried making falcon sounds at him (convinced it was a him due to his streamlined size), but sounded more crow like and got a crow like response in answer! We were basically walking straight into the rising sun at this point (hello daylight savings), and missed the turn up Wood Rd. I really feel like this hawk appeared to help guide us, as we checked the map and only had to backtrack a couple hundred feet to turn up the road where he had roosted. He took off once we returned and went the right way, soaring in beautiful circles above us as we stared a bit mesmerized. I am a huge fan of raptors, and this experience was deeply striking for me… he found his thermals and soared up up and around. Thank you for showing us the way!
Most of the rest of the walk was along ATV trails, with some wet places to navigate around, but not too bad. The trail turned into a dirt road for a short while, before turning back to a road allowance clearly only usable by off road vehicles/ATVs. I can see a lot of this section being a much trickier part of the trail in wet weather/in spring. Fairly flat walking had us making incredible time. Somewhere along Gilroy “Road”, a side-by-side ATV passed us! This was the only sign of others we came across on the trail today.
Heading South from 13C back to Richardson road, we marked a gorgeous future picnic spot to return to next year, and wrapped up our latest journey of our trek. Really great walk today – the weather cooperated, the sun was beautiful, and no getting lost!
We headed back to Smith’s Falls for lunch, and chose The Vault due to me finding out they had a meatball sandwich, something I had been craving for awhile. This was a bit of a bust. The venue is great, and the service was very friendly. However…. they had no potatoes available so we had to sub potato wedges for caesar salad, which is fine since we love caesar! Too bad this one was super bitter and just…not delicious. Lettuce supply issues in November likely something out of their control, but still disappointing and we both left a lot of salad behind on our plates. Uncooked meatballs certainly is within their control though, and mine came not only pink, but red in the centre….I wouldn’t come back here, even though I can tell my bad experience wasn’t the norm for them. There are too many other places to try…We will be eating in Merrickville next time regardless (let’s see if I can manage to go somewhere other than Iron Forge pizza 😉 ).
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