Sat, Aug 20 2011 - Explore St. Jacobs and Hike in Elora Gorge (View Original Event Details)
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Our adventure began at St. Jacob's farmers market. It's a HUGE and a very busy place. The photo of the market layout (in the photo album) could be used to help identify a specific meeting place for those arriving in different cars. To save time, one needs to be very precise, as there are different entrance points even to the same buildings. After about an hour of shopping, exploring and elbowing through the crowed market stalls... we have bought as little as a single peach to as much as bags full of fresh produce, cheese and meat. Everything looked so good and fresh.. it was hard to resist.
Our next stop was the village of St. Jacobs short distance down the road. Again we spent about an hour exploring the stores for antiques and crafts and, of course... for more food.. Everyone made a visit to the bakery with its huge offering of sinful treats!! Yum!
Finally we were off to the Elora Gorge. Elora Gorge stop was a bit more challenging to plan, as there appears to be no single, useful, online map or guide to the WHOLE place/area, that I was able to find. I chose the Elora Conservation Area was the easiest meeting point for the carpools (for the next time, though, I'll pick a place in the village). The photo of the trail map (in the photo album) shows the lookouts and the trails that are available in the Conservation Area. While these trails were very short (for the experienced TOC hikes like us! :) there were some neat lookout points (eg hole in the rock) that gave the closer glimpse to the gorge below. The canopy of the cedar trees also provided refreshing coolness from the heat of the day. We then hiked out of the conservation area into the village of Elora. It was short hike but it provided a nice view of the old Elora Mill and the rapids on the Grand River. We crossed the Metcalfe street bridge to the other side of the Grand River and into the main tourist area of the village. We then followed the village map (photo in the album) for another short hike to the Victoria Park where again we enjoyed the various views of the Gorge. The skies were threatening with rain, and so we decided to shorten our route and go back to the village to reward all our hiking efforts with ... you guessed it... more food!... organic ice cream in this case. All the ice cream flavours on offering at Mapleton's Organic were enjoyed between everyone of us, and some of us even claimed that it was the best ice cream we've ever tasted. Some of us (power shoppers?:)) managed to find the time to visit some shops, that also received some high praise. In the end, in addition to the views of the Gorge, our adventure at Elora also included observing people tubing down the rapids (we wished were were able to do the same), zip-liners going across the gorge (wishing to do the same.. but not so much...) , the town cryer announcing the daily special at a local business and the small wedding party photo shoot (that looked like it included beer and pickup trucks). At the end, we retraced our steps to the Conservation Area and our cars. We certainly did not see all (or even most) of what the Elora Gorge has to offer but we found some nice surprises along the way, such as a pretty village and delicious ice cream. We'll save the rest for another trip!
Thanks to everyone who came out and made this event a fun adventure and experience. Big thanks to drivers Kelly J and Galina for carpool driving.
$12 in donations as collected with thanks!
Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Erik Sonstenes at photos@torontooutdoorclub.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.