Two walks in One Weekend: McKerral Woodlot, Old Chatham Township

   The McKerral Woodlot is just a place I have recently heard of thanks to the development of WalkCK. There is a guided nature walk that will be taking place here on May 10, so I thought it would be neat to check it out ourselves first. On Saturday morning we had some time between getting up and ready and a hair appointment for myself so we set out to McKerral Woodlot for a quick walk.

   When we got there we could see it would be a short walk from the road where we parked to the actual woodlot. As we started the walk we soon realized it was going to take a lot longer than we first imagined. What looked like a little snow on the wet muddy field was actually over a foot of snow. This meant that our options for walking was either the muddy field or falling through the snow up to our knees every few steps.

  As we got closer to the woodlot we could hear the odd 'moo'. These were rather hilarious and frightening moments every time we heard it, as this woodlot was surrounded by farms, and we were starting to wonder if there could be cows in the woodlot, and if so what do we do? We are by no means "city folk" but we are obviously not "country folk" either.

   By the time we got to the woodlot it was about 20 minutes later. Hubby went ahead to assure me there were no cows to be seen however, neither was there any trail.

    I am assuming there probably was a walkway of some sort but there was a lot of leaves on the ground and swampy areas so it was hard to get around that day. There were a couple of signs of spring coming which was very promising to see and hear on yet another cold day. We could see some green between the leaves on the ground starting to grow, and the sound of songbirds could be heard throughout the woodlot. The boys had a blast exploring the area, and climbing over and under the logs.

    We had to head back rather shortly after we got there knowing the walk back through the field would take a while once again. We ended up leaving the woodlot a slightly different way from where we entered it, this was a much more muddy way. The boys thought it was just so much fun to get so muddy! They were pretty pooped by the end, the 2 year old hitched a ride on his dad's shoulders and the 4 yr old kept falling and laying down on the snow pretending he was asleep.



 Getting to the car was like a reward where we could get the muddy boots and coats off and crank up the heat to warm up. We drove off with our oldest telling us this was his "...most favourite hike so far!" I can't wait to go again when it gets a bit warmer so there is less snow to trudge through, and definitely more time to explore!