Lunenburg to Annapolis Royal, Tuesday, 6-Jun-2023
While practically all of the hiking trails in Nova Scotia were closed due to fires when we first arrived, the rain greatly helped the firefighting efforts, and the trails we were looking at were re-opened. Taking advantage of the situation, we did a couple of short hikes in Kejimkujik National Park on our way to spending the night in Annapolis Royal.
We had gotten food for breakfast the night before, so we ate, packed, and started driving pretty early. We were hoping to get at least our first hike in before the rain started.
Kejimkujik National Park
This was our best chance to go to Kejimkujik National Park since it's about halfway between Lunenburg and Annapolis Royal.
Since we have an annual pass for the National Parks, we were able to bypass the entrance kiosk and went straight to the Visitor Centre. Our first trail started from the parking lot, so all we needed to do was go to the car to pick up our stuff.
The Mill Falls Trail goes along the Mersey River. It's only about a half mile to the falls itself, but just past it is a bridge where you get a full-on view. We continued along the river until the trail ended at another parking lot, then doubled back. The rain held off for our whole hike, and we considered ourselves lucky.
We then got back in the car to go to the next trail, Hemlocks and Hardwoods. It started raining as we were driving, but we decided to do the hike anyway, hoping the trees would give us at least some cover. This is a loop where one side of the loop is an interpretive trail that shows the lifecycle of hemlock trees.
The first area was the result of a controlled burn, and it showed that the first trees to come in are aspens. Further along, we saw that hemlocks were starting to grow. As they got larger, they would out-compete the aspens, and made the forest floor's conditions closer to what hemlocks prefer; several hemlock saplings were around us. In this part, the park wants to protect the old hemlocks with boardwalks to prevent people from stepping on the fragile roots. As the hemlocks get really old, hardwood trees (maple and oak) come in and begin to take over.
After the interpretive part of the trail, we looped back and walked within sight of Big Dam Lake. There were several campgrounds, so we went toward one of them to take a look at the lake. We couldn't get down to the shore but did get a look at the water. There was a picnic table there, but it was pretty wet.
During the whole hike, the rain didn't really let up, but not much water made it through the trees to us, so we didn't get nearly as wet as we would have on other trails. We made our way back to the car and ate our lunch.
Annapolis Royal
Leaving Kejimkujik National Park, we drove further north to Annapolis Royal, where we will be spending the next few days. After checking into our room and cleaning up, we drove towards the downtown area. First on the list was to go to the store to get some food to supplement the breakfast that comes with the room. The store ended up being more of a mercantile store than a grocery, so we would need to go to another store to get fruit.
After dropping the groceries at the car, we walked to a German bakery for dinner. We were going to have goulash, but they were out. We ended up with a schnitzel meal for dinner and apple strudel for dessert. Both were great and plenty of food when split between us.
We then went to another grocery store, got our fruit, then returned to the room to plan for the next few days then call it a night.
