Thu, Aug 23 2012 - Toronto Island Tree Tour hike (part 1) (View Original Event Details)
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The first ever TOC Toronto Island Tree Tour . . .
8 willing test subjects showed up on time and at the right place to join me for my inaugural TITT (wow, so that explains why they have never used any kind of short form for that!)
But anyway, I had obviously not messed up on my special magic spell this time, because the weather was truly awesome! (seriously, when it calls for one part dragon's blood, you CANNOT substitute myrrh!) So the weather was beyond reproach, I had remembered to bring the fashionable TOC t-shirt to wear, and we all caught the same ferry (just barely!!!) And we were off . . .
Map in hand, it wasn't until we were on the Island that I realized it might actually be harder than I thought to locate the trees in question without my trusty GPS (which I did forget to bring, along with my camera). I mean, there are actually a LOT of trees on that island! You can’t just show up in an area and say "Hey, that must be it!" Meghan found the first one, remarking that the tree over there looked like an apple tree. A quick consult to my map told me that YES, we were supposed to find an apple tree somewhere around there! (At which point my anxiety levels dropped a little, like, OK, maybe we can pull this off without the GPS after all). We all were so excited about this tree; it was a crab-apple tree, and although most of the "low-hanging fruit" was still green, the tall Allison managed to jump and get some red apple to try out (I think it was her first crab apple?) From there we quickly found the pear(less) tree! After that, we were on our own. We headed off down the trail/road, and managed to locate a tree or two. Pretty soon, while the rest of us were still blindly looking for a post or a sign nailed to the prized tree, Anita pointed out that there was a green tree silhouette painted on the trail where each tree was. WAY TO GO ANITA!! It's only appropriate to point out here that this was Anita's first TOC event! (I can't wait to see how much she kicks my ass at geocaching! :) )
I’d be totally remiss if I didn’t mention a bunch of racers ran by us while we were hiking. At first we thought it was the annual "Longboat race", but I found it was actually a "Sunset shuffle 6km". You can read more about Tom Longboat here! Despite what race it actually was, we spent several fruitful minutes cheering the runners along, many seemed to really appreciate the gesture, and a few seemed to really need it!
Fast forward a bunch of trees, we get to Ward's Island Ferry area a full hour before the ferry. (And I don't remember ever hiking that slow ever before). Nothing to do but stop at the Island Café for a freezie, wine or beer and some nachos. Catching the ferry home was adventure enough in itself, but we all made it back to the mainland without having to locate the life-jackets. (No, any exec members reading this… we didn’t almost drown, I simply recounted the story of the video I watched today during my First Aid course at work!!!)
Hey everyone, I had a really great first TITT, thanks for coming out!
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.