Hiking Orchard Trail

 

In the past whenever we went hiking, it didn’t really matter how far we had to drive to get to the trail because we were always able to find a washroom if needed.  Unfortunately, even though the trails are open, facilities remain closed and even places like Tim Hortons where you could previously nip in for a quick pee are also inaccessible.  This makes it a huge problem when going on a hike that’s a far distance.  Of course, you can pee on the trail, but you run the risk of exposing your bare bum to strangers.

 

So, we scoured the AllTrails app looking for a trail that was closer to home.  What we found was The Rouge National Urban Park. It straddles parts of the cities of Toronto, Markham, Pickering and the Township of Uxbridge. And it was only a 30 minute drive from our home.

 

This park is similar to those like Central Park in New York, but at a much larger size. In fact, it’s 23 times larger than Central park. It’s the largest urban park in North America.  A rich assembly of natural, cultural and agricultural landscapes, Rouge National Urban Park is home to amazing biodiversity, some of the last remaining working farms in the Greater Toronto Area, Carolinian ecosystems, Toronto’s only campground, one of the region’s largest marshes, a beach at Lake Ontario, amazing hiking opportunities, and human history dating back over 10,000 years, including some of Canada's oldest known Indigenous sites.

 

This park is home to 247 migratory and resident bird species; 44 mammals such as beaver, coyote, groundhog, white-tailed deer, and red fox; 27 amphibians and reptiles such as garter snake, painted turtle, snapping turtle, and green frog; 73 fish species and; habitats such as thickets, meadows, wetlands, rivers, marshes and agricultural fields.

 

There were 13 trails to explore and we decided to hike the Orchard Trail, the most diverse trail in the park. The app stated that it was 5.1 km loop trail, but when we got there, we found that it was only a 2 km out and back which would only equal a total of 4 km.

 

There was a parking lot at the south end of the trail off of Twyn Rivers Drive, but it was still closed. That meant we were all forced to park on the side of the busy road. I’m not sure why they would open the park, but still leave the parking lot closed. All that did was make it incredible dangerous for everyone who was trying to come and go from the trail.  

 

It was a gorgeous hot day—25 degrees Celsius and we were all liberally coated in sunscreen. We were a little worried that the trail would be really crowded because the weather was so nice so we brought some masks to wear if needed. As it turned out there were a lot of people about, but most were respectful of social distancing.

We started at the south end of the trail and travelled west along Little Rouge Creek toward the bridge.  From there we had to cross Twyn Rivers Drive, so we had to be very careful of traffic.  Once on the other side we entered the woods. The trails are well developed but are not always marked well, so we had to keep track of our direction since there were many off-shoots which basically lead no-where. At first we could hear the sound of traffic which kept us in mind that we were smack-dab in the middle of the city and not out in the wilderness. It was a weird juxtaposition of hearing city sounds while hiking through a forest.  

 

About halfway through there were dormant apple orchards (hence the name of the trail), that would have been harvested for hundreds of years, feeding local families.

 

As we made our way north, the trail ran parallel to a railroad track. While we were walking we could hear a train in the distance, but couldn’t see it and Cilla was terrified it was going to come barrelling through the trees and mow us over.  She ran around in circles for about 20 seconds in blind panic before we could convince her she was okay.

 

With Cilla being five and shorter in stature and closer to the ground, she saw things that we missed. Our cue was usually her screaming and we heard her do exactly that just up ahead on the trail. We weren’t terribly concerned since she can be pretty dramatic. “I saw a snake,” she said while simultaneously doing a little dance that was meant to either confuse the snake, scare it, or help her avoid it, I’m not sure. But it was entertaining non-the-less. “Maybe it bite me,” she said worriedly. We had to explain that there were no poisonous snakes in the park and it was most-likely a harmless garter snake. I love snakes and was sad to have missed it.

 

We had quite the steep walk up the escarpment where we had lovely views of the river and forests. 

We then walked across a boardwalk through beautiful human-made wetlands, which buffleheads, painted turtles and swans are known to frequent at various times throughout the year. It was pretty quiet today though and we didn’t see any.

The terrain was pretty rough in some places with a mixture of rocks, dirt and tree roots that eventually tripped Cilla up. She was not very happy about that and I gave her a piggy-back for a little while.  

The trail ended at Beare Road Landfill. Originally this was a sand and gravel pit, but in 1966 when it was almost impossible to extract any more sand or  gravel, it was turned into a landfill, taking hundreds of garbage trucks a day. It was in operation until 1983 and it took years before they decided what to do with the property. It was finally decided the property would best suit a wetland restoration.

 

On our way back we were stopped by a sound we could hear in the trees.  We spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out what it was. It almost sounded like a kitten mewling, and for a few seconds I pictured us going home with a newly rescued kitten. But that didn’t seem right—why would there be a kitten in a tree way out here?  So then we wracked our brains trying to figure out what other baby animals or birds it could be. We eventually came to the conclusion that it was a bird because the sound moved too fast from one tree to the next. But neither of us had ever heard of a bird meowing.  It seemed absurd!  When I got home I looked it up and sure enough, what we heard was the sound of a Gray Catbird.

 

On the car on ride home, we could hear a little voice from the back of the car say, “Mama, I have 2 boo-boos now. I’m having a rough day.”