They had a special winter promotion at the lodge, a reduced rate plus a $15 dollar coupon for breakfast for breakfast both mornings, so that was nice. We started our day with a delicious lodge dining room breakfast.
It’s good we had a hearty breakfast because we hiked all day, Ok, well, not all day,..we didn’t actually start hiking until noon, and I’m not entirely sure why it took us so long to get going, but there you have it. We hiked for four hours, a total of five miles. Whew.
We started at a different parking area than we’d ever been to and it took a coupe of times circling back on the road to figure out where it was because there was no sign. As you can see, nobody else was there and who knows if anybody ever stopped there. Surely they do when the weather is nice.
The start of the little path towards the woods. We had to cross the road, but there were no cars. I look a little crazy already and we hadn’t even started.
At other entrances to the trails I’m pretty sure we had to walk up or down many steps, but it was easier this time. Here’s the first canyon we came to, Hennepin Canyon.
Today Kevin was again spearing trash, and you can see the big bag dangling out from under his coat. So much trash for the middle of winter.
This is just a small segment of the steps we had to walk down to get into a canyon.
We made it to this cute bridge where we’d been before.
I leaned over to take a picture of the branches which had fallen down onto the iced river.
I fell down when walking down the bridge because it was very sandy, but I didn’t hurt myself at all. Kevin picked me up and got me upright. It’s funny, even though there were slippery and steep places, I didn’t hurt myself while doing all that hiking. Instead, I twisted my leg a couple days after we got back home.
I was running the next Saturday, and I got to the little balance place where you have to walk on thick cables and there were different kinds of ropes to grab onto, but on one section one of the ropes was gone. I always fall off the balance thing but never hurt myself, but this time I fell over the rope lying on the cable and somehow managed to fall hard which caused a lot of pain. That was over a week ago and it’s still not much better, so hopefully I’ll recover soon.
Anyway..that’s why I’m called Grace. Here’s the frozen waterfall at LaSalle Canyon.
Both frozen and dripping down, so very very cool.
We were going to stop right there but then were brave enough to traverse over a bit of ice and Kevin touched the waterfall.
The funny thing is, this canyon is a quite popular one and I’m pretty sure there were always people there. I remember one family in particular, the father was so loud and he kept loudly talking to his family and he was very annoying. Your voice carries in a canyon anyway, and he echoed through the place.
But this time, nobody at all. We actually didn’t see one other person the entire time we hiked that day. We did see a few people on Tuesday and a few on Thursday so maybe people took long weekends to go there. It was awesome to be the only ones.
As we made our way back on the river trail there was lots of ice movement on the water.
Kevin collected so much trash on this river trail including a large bottle of liquor and plenty of beer bottles. I can’t imagine hiking drunk.
Even though we hiked twice as far as the day before, it was really nice that we didn’t have to climb a giant metal staircase this time. Wooden steps are the best.
When we got back to the lodge I enjoyed the hot tub even though it could have been hotter and Kevin did a little swimming. After another great lodge dinner we enjoyed our fire in our cabin.
A good time was had by all.
Ok then,
Mrs. Hiking Hughes.