Our first joiners – Rachel and Sam

Day 11, October 28, 2011,  Part 1 — Cherry Ave. to Ball’s Falls

Day 11 started with great fun!  Rachel and Sam, Marian’s niece from Chatham,  and her nephew from Grimsby, joined us on the first 5 km to Ball’s Falls.  They have thereby earned themselves a place in the history of this adventure as being the first friends to join our trek.

It was a family day in every way – Oma Freddie chauffered the group of us to yesterday’s ending point and today’s beginning point, the Megalomaniac Winery sign.  Well, said Aunt Marian, since we’re here of course we must first drive to see the winery itself.  What a great winery – carved right into the escarpment limestone like a big bunker. You could run up the hill and stand on top of the roof – which of course the kids did.

And the early morning view from there was stunning.

And then we four happy hikers headed down the trail with Sam in the lead.  He got the job of spotting the blazes and finding our trail, and he turned out to be a great scout.  We did not get lost once when we had him in charge!

Our trail led us down and up hills, along a brook, across a bridge, beside roads.  At one point we walked alongside a farm field where a family of goats walked in tandem with our group, the big-horned ram firmly in front.  Sam, it turns out, does a great imitation of a ram – hence his new name, Sam the Ram.

Soon we were able to hear the sounds of Ball’s Falls and the rapids below, but the trail offered no view until suddenly Sam shouted, “There it is!”  Wow – we almost missed a most spectacular waterfall.  It’s like a smaller version of Niagara Falls.  In fact, the Bruce Trail Guidebook says Ball’s Falls is 2/3 the height of Niagara.

Many photographs later…  we moved on to the little historic settlement at Ball’s Falls where we waited for Freddie and Ralph to pick up Sam and Rachel.  While we waited we searched and searched to find the next blazes — that is, we searched for the blazes after Sam almost refused to give everyone their snacks, until Magdalena had to tackle him.

Sam and Magdalena scouted everywhere but they couldn’t find the double blazes to show a turn, and they couldn’t find any single blazes up the road.  They did however find a most mysterious brick “building” in the hillside that needed to be explored.  Sam was sent in with the camera and he took these informative photographs so Magdalena could see what it looked like.

Maybe one of our blog readers can explain this one to us — we are still puzzled.

It was Rachel in the end who had the good eyes to see that the trail turned to the left just in front of the chapel.  Thank you, Rachel.  With that settled we set up the camera on the tripod and when Freddie and Ralph arrived we took this beautiful photo to remember a wonderful morning.

That’s Ralph, Freddie, Marian, Rachel, Magdalena and Sam!  magdalena