Mileage: 21.5 km

Today was a good day.

It was hard but good.

Toothless woke at 6:30am, which gave us a bit of time to sleep in after the wonky, slow and late past few days. He was in the best of moods so we were able to break camp in about an hour. This is rare so far with Toothless, so it was very helpful!

We didn’t get to do this section in 2018 due to fire closures. I am very glad we did it today. It was beautiful and classic GDT.

We had lunch at Alderson Lake and Toothless roamed around.

The sun was out but there was a breeze – sometimes a gust – that kept us cool all day. Toothless was fine with his temperature but was not pleased with the wind in his face. Natasha was able to block it and that made a huge difference.

We stopped to have a break at Cameron Lake. The boat rental place sells snacks and pop so we had a bottle of iced tea and kept moving.

The road walk to Akimina was narrow and hot due to the neighbouring burn. This was quickly over and we started..a walk up a wide equestrian trail through burn. Also hot. The umbrella was very useful all day, particularly on the burn.

By this point Toothless was running out of steam. It was getting close to 5pm and he let us know he wanted a change of pace. We pushed on the last kilometer or so and gave him an opportunity to crawl around at camp.

Camp is … unfortunate. The entire area was recently burned so the camp is in amongst all of that. No trees and sun exposed. Dusty. Good (new) facilities but clearly this was once a breathtaking area. It’s now hot and slowly renewing.

We are expecting a similar day tomorrow so we will try to finish before 5pm to keep Toothless from getting too tired of being carried. Overall we aren’t planning many days this long so after tomorrow the days will be shorter and we will have more wiggle room.