Hiking Medway Valley Heritage Forest

In the first summer of the pandemic we redecorated our TV room. In the process of this venture, we bought some local photography to affix to the wall. We were both excited about these autumn photos taken by an Ontario photographer in a forest near London Ontario. (I'm currently looking for the link to his Instagram to post here).

This past long weekend we decided to take a short retreat away to Port Stanley. Since Port Stanley is a significantly closer road trip to the Forest from our wall art, we picked the warmest day we had (a balmy 8 degrees) to go and hike Medway Valley Heritage Forest.

There is free parking at the entrance to the forest and enough spaces for about 5 cars. Since the trailhead is located in a residential neighbourhood, if the lot was full you could probably find street parking.

This is a well carved out loop that is an easy to moderate 2-3KM hike (the moderate was only because of the slippery mud). The major challenge this time of year was that the mud made some of the hills slippery and mucky. 

While we weren't given bright fall colours on this early spring hike, the signs of warmer weather and bright colours were hard to miss.

Along the way we found a fort that someone had built in the forest. Jack named it "Castle Byers" as inspired by Stranger Things.

A section of the trail takes you alongside the river. It was a relatively quite day where we only stumbled upon two other groups of hikers and one person in waders fishing in the river.

A failed attempt to skip stones. We couldn't find many rocks that were the right shape.

As for wildlife spotting, our best find was this active woodpecker Molly managed to snap a photo of.

While we weren't wowed by fall colours on this hike or any other spectacular views it was a nice way to break our hiking shoes back in for spring. Early spring hikes are great because the bugs aren't out yet! As a free hike that is only 2-3KM I encourage anyone who is in the area to check it out. We hiked for about 40 minutes and this is a nice, easy, short hike for kids. That being said, it's not going to make my top 10 list, despite being the source of beautiful art in my house. Stay tuned for more hiking adventures later this spring!

Molly the Conqueror

 One of my 101 in 1001 resolutions and parenting goals is to teach and support my children in being charitable and nurturing their giving nature. Now that they're older and more aware of the world and news headlines around them they (Molly in particular) want to make a difference. 

I have been completing Conqueror Virtual Fitness Challenges since the beginning of the pandemic to help gamify fitness, motivate myself to walk more errands, walk the dog more, and because I've always been a sucker for trophies and ribbons. To date I have finished four challenges.

At the beginning of this year Molly expressed an interest in joining me for a challenge, and so she and I began the 4000km long challenge of the Pacific Coast Trail that we gave ourselves 365 days to to hike, bike, and walk (we're currently about 1200KM along our journey), and I'm really hoping we can finish it before we hit 300 days, but we'll see what we can manage.

Molly really loves that Conqueror plants a tree every time we hit a 20 percent milestone on each challenge.

When the news hit of what was going on in the Ukraine, Molly wanted to help and spent some time trying to figure out how. When the Conqueror Community asked for a challenge to with all proceeds donated to International Red Cross and Save The Children currently providing to Ukraine appeal we, along with a friend of our S, became three of 15,000 participants who helped raise over $500,000 USD in just a week. To find out more click here.

Yesterday Molly finished her Ukraine Challenge (doing so in just 10 days), and next week I will begin mine while she plugs away at our Pacific Crest Trail Challenge.

Two weeks ago she had us participate in an earth hour and I know there will be at least a community clean-up on our agenda come Earth Day this year, maybe more. She's researching...

I can't emphasize enough how proud I am of our little activist, being a person who works towards making change. 

How are you helping your children embrace their charitable side?