snOw, Canada: Part 2

As I was perusing Instagram, I saw a post that a new ice skating trail in Muskoka just opened so I decided to go check it out. It is located on the waterfront at Hanna Park in Port Carling. It was about an hour away from Huntsville. I showed up first thing in the morning and there was a fresh coat of snow on the rink. There were shovels there so I laced up and spent a half hour skating around and shoveling the rink. I also found some traffic cones so I put them up over a few thin spots I found. As soon as I got a lane opened a family came and their 2 kids were using those skating assist bars so they took up the whole trail. I got annoyed at having to skate around them so I left. At least I did my good deed for the day. 

Hanna Park

My next stop was Johnstons Cranberry Marsh. They also have an ice skating trail but this one goes around a cranberry bog so its wide open. I was the first one there so I again got to make first tracks. They had gotten more snow though so the snow was going over the tops of my skates which was slowing me down.

The one glimpse of sun all weekend

They also offer snowshoe trails so I took a break from skating to traipse through the woods. They had signposts up with interesting facts about cranberry farming so I learned a lot. I headed back to the ice skating trail and did one lap before they finally sent out a plow to get the couple inches of snow off. After that, it was much easier to get around.

Johnstons Cranberry

I finally exhausted myself after skating and showshoeing for 4 hours so I got a hot cran-apple cider and headed back. It had snowed all day and the way back to Huntsville was via backroads that were completely snow covered so it was a bit of a white knuckle drive but I made it safely.

Snow

The next day I decided to stick close to home because there was a freezing rain warning for later in the day. I went back to Arrowhead Provincial Park.

Tubing hill

My first stop was the snow tubing hill. I love snow tubing and had a blast. Once again, I was the first on the freshly groomed trail. It was so much fun to fly down the hill but then you had to turn around and walk back up which was exhausting.

Meadow Lake

 I did the Meadow Lake snowshoe trail next. It was marked as easy but the long loop had some elevation with a narrow trail that I kept sliding off. I got back and headed over to the ice rink where I strapped on my snowshoes again and headed to Stubbs Falls.

Stubb Falls

This was a much more level trail and it was nice to see rushing water in the winter wonderland. The only annoying thing was there were stairs to get down to the falls so I had to take my snowshoes off. After that, I was tired of snowshoeing so I decided to put on my ice skates one more time and go back on the ice trail. It was nice to see it in the daylight. It was also much less crowded.

Ice skating trail

I decided to head over to the warm up shelter to eat my lunch but as I pulled in the parking lot I felt the front of my car go over the lip of the parking lot into soft snow. My tires started spinning and I was freaking out that I was stuck but there was a guy in a truck next to me who said he had done the same thing. Luckily he had four wheel drive and a rope so he gave me a tug backwards to get me out. Thank god for nice, prepared Canadians. I figured it was time to call it a day so I headed into downtown Huntsville and did some window shopping for a couple hours until the storm moved in. The next day it took me over half an hour to scrape my car of all the ice. I had such a blast playing in the snow for a few days but I was happy to be back in the land of dry roads and parking lots!