Pro D Days are for adventuring

It's become kind of a tradition for us to head to Harrison for the last pro d day of the year. The weather is always a bit of a crapshoot. We've had gorgeous and we've had cold drizzle. But this year, it was forecast to rain. And it had been raining for weeks and weeks, so we didn't think we were going to get away with just a light drizzle this time.

We decided to start by finding a trail I'd seen on social media, but never when we'd been in town. I'd heard it referred to as the Spirit Trail. Turns out it was really easy to find, you just have to find it before you get right into town (turn right at the big sasquatch that's sitting on the right side of the road in, then make a left on to an McCoombs, and the parking is right on the side of the road.)

Aside from the gorgeous woodland, and the instagram worthy boardwalks, what makes this walk really special is all the masks a  local resident carved and placed throughout the forest.

Once we put our phones away (to be fair, there was a "bear in area" sign right at the parking lot and he was letting his friends know his homestay mom was leading him to his death...) it was a lot of fun trying to spot them all.

There were also a lot of signs of spring along the way.

Some of the masks didn't weather the winter all that well.

The Spirit loop is short. I think it took us half an hour even with me stopping constantly to take pictures and the short jaunt we did to look at the longer trail (it was REALLY muddy).

When (if?) it ever dries out, we'll come back and do the longer trail, because I think that's where all the board walks are.

After we'd finished the loop (almost getting lost in an eternal loop), we headed to the beach. It looked like our luck was going to hold. There was nothing but blue sky over the lake, or at least it felt like it.
But after about twenty minutes we could see the rain moving across the lake and we barely made it into the van before the deluge started.

We decided to soothe our sad hearts by heading to our favorite dairy in Rosedale for ice cream.But it's closed. Our sad hearts were not feeling soothed.

So we drove home via Cultus Lake, and stopped at Birchwood Dairy (a sorry substitute, I'm not a fan of their ice cream), and then headed home. It was a pretty good day.