Day 9 (Aug 22)

Awoke to gunfire. The same nonchalant style as last night, frequent but irregular. Baffling.

Back down on the trail, the mosquitos are at the ready from first footfall. Travis, our B&B host in Dundas, had told us that the harsh winter and extreme spring snowmelt had somehow made for the worst mosquito season any Ontarian could remember. I believe it. Those guys are lurking everywhere in the lush greenery.

But the spring snowmelt is long gone, so finding water in August can be a challenge. And what we find, we don't always want... Most hiking we've done is of the up-into-the-mountains sort, where the water is more or less trustworthy and even springs right up out of the ground if you're lucky. Here there are no springs to be found, and what's flowing down the Escarpment has untold housing, industry, and agriculture in its watershed -- whatever's on the land west of the cliffs, and it's hard to say. Some water has odd coloring, some looks fine and smells funny. We're carrying a filter, but still much prefer municipal water when we can find it. But since the Devil's Punchbowl we haven't found a drop, good or bad. So we're thirsty.

During a brief road-walking interlude we see our first vineyard:

 

Looks like we're in grape (and wine!) country now. Some of those vines don't look too good, though. Dry, like us.

Luckily the trail heads down and takes us right through the little town of Grimsby, and Deb spots a water fountain at a public pool. We'll live to hike again!

After lunch and resupply, heavy with food and water, we trudge up in the afternoon sun. A section of the trail on private land has been closed because the property is for sale. (An enormous clifftop mansion, out of our price range, but calling all Canadian billionaire Bruce Trail fans, buy that place and open the trail!) The reroute takes us right past the door of a small B&B, the Crown Ridge. Sure the road is unshaded and the sun is beating us like a maul but do we really want to stop after such a short day? Well yes. The hostess greets us with a glass of delicious Niagara rosé which we enjoy from our balcony with a view of Lake Ontario over the trees. Looks like we might like being in wine country after all. Is that a boat rocking? I hope so.