I was so tired after my week up north that I struggled through the first week at home, napping daily, going to bed early, and fighting to get in my regularly scheduled runs without slumping into a ditch somewhere. Little doubt that I never made it out for a long walk.

The Route

The Kid remedied that and, knowing that I’ve been working on this challenge, suggested we go—and she come with me.  We drove down to the parking lot of Fort Edmonton, an historical attraction in the river valley and not-yet-open for the season… so it’s parking lot was basically empty.  It’s a common staging area for a lot of river valley walks because it in this convenient location next to the freeway and is a kind of intersection for a lot of south-west valley trails. In other words, there were a lot of other cars there doing the same thing as us.

We walked along the south shore of the river, up in the direction of the University, took a bunch of photos of the view and then dropped back down towards the big newly-re-opened park. Around here I calculated we were going to be about klick short if we kept along our looping path so I suggested we stroll up along the park’s perimeter path for a bit to both check out the renovations that have had the park closed for three years and also tack on some distance.

We looped back and crossed the footbridge and strolled for a couple klicks through the dog park—of great joy to the dog, who yes, was tagging along for the full ten klicks like a trooper.

Then it was up and back across the traffic bridge and back to the fort. 

The Effort

The route had some hills and some stairs but I think what really kicked in was the heat. It wasn’t hot, per se, but I left the house with a jacket and was carrying it within ten minutes. A bit of a shame and I’m gonna need to plan to tough out the early chill in upcoming walks and assume I’ll be warm enough—better than carrying a coat the whole way.

All in all we tracked 10.2km in 2:30 precisely. This brings me up to 86.6km total in about twenty-two hours of effort.  This is getting serious.

The Highlight

I don’t know why the big park is a particularly snaky place, but I frequently have seen garter snakes slithering off the path when I run or walk there. This walk quickly became a bit of a snake-seeing tour. Even the dog jumped a foot in the air when the stick she thought she was investigating turned out to be a two-foot long garter snake and zipped out from under her nose.

Garter snakes are pretty harmless, be maybe a little bit of a risk for a small, tired puppy, but the snake wasn’t interested in even a more balanced fight.  

That said, we’re not much of a snake place, so while were used to seeing lots of birds and beavers and chittering squirrels, to this point in the year I’d seen more moose than snakes—so its modestly memorable that way.

Oh, and having the Kid pushing me to meet my goals is starting to make me feel like turning fifty might be more than a milestone, too. Sigh.