Tuesday September 8th

We spent the afternoon completing the Junior Ranger program, which included a game of Echo – pretending to be a bat, wearing a blindfold and following the sounds of claps to locate the other players. Jake’s favorite activity in his book was ‘tricking a spider’ by placing a blade of grass in a spider’s web to entice the spider out of his hiding place, he was amazed that it worked. These JR programs are full of interesting ideas and activities.

After an early dinner, we went to the south shore of the lake to hike the ‘Balanced Rock’ trail. The JR program required that the kids hike a trail and this one looked the most interesting, although it was listed as ‘challenging’, we thought we could do it. I’m not sure we would have hiked a trail had the program not required it and we’re so glad we did.

As we got to the base of the trail, Dave said, “I guess we go up.” I assumed he was joking as all I could see was a steep face of rocks and started laughing. “No, I’m serious; the trail marker is this way!” Yes, the trail did indeed go straight up the side of the mountain, there were rock steep steps curving up in amongst all the rocks left from the glaciers. It was such a great path, part of the Ice Age trail. We climbed steadily upwards, being careful to stay away from the edge until we reached the balanced rock.

It truly is balanced, kind of looks as though someone just placed it there and it could just topple at any moment. It’s really amazing that it hasn’t fallen off during a storm but I suppose it’ll remain where it is, despite many people trying to push it over the edge!

We carefully hiked down; everyone did so well, despite the steepness. It was getting quite late but the kids really wanted to swim in the lake. Thankfully this time, I’d had the foresight to bring swimwear. It was pretty relaxing for Dave and I to just sit and watch the kids play and swim, they were so happy, therefore we were happy.

We headed back to our site to sit around the fire: a very pleasant day.