What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Summer has finally arrived. Both meteorologically with the heat, and metaphorically in that I've been having some fun. I count a successful summer by the number of times I have to dig around in the camping equipment box. Because summer fun cannot be had without needing something out of that box. Bug spray, beach booties, picnic supplies. So far I've been in there three times, and Peter once. There have been summers (the last one for example) where I didn't need to go in there at all. Score one for Nova Scotia.
I fully give credit to this being the summer of visitors. A friend is visiting from Vancouver right now and so we are doing all the summer fun things that I never do unless trying to convince a CFA that this really is a good place to live. Like visiting the sandy beach only 2 minutes down the road, or going for ice cream at a place that has a great view of 4 counties. Like walking the dykes, throwing a back yard neighbourhood barbecue or hiking to Cape Split.
Yes. that's right. Hiking. Me. I've been known to hike before. But the trek to Cape Split was a new one for me. I'm from the other side of the Minas Channel, so Cape Split was always a place that you looked at while sipping a beer at a friends cottage in Diligent Harbour. Where I come from no one would be crazy enough to want to walk there. It is completely inaccessible. Except here, where people seem to think it is a right of passage to take life in limb and wander off into the woods on a badly marked and treacherous "Not a trail" just for the reward of getting really close to those spires.
We were lead to believe that it wasn't really a hike so much as a walk. We were also lead to believe that it was a 3 hour tour. Maybe for someone with the legs of a giraffe, but it took us two hours to walk in, two hours to drink a bottle of wine to recuperate and two hours to walk out. When I say walk I mean climb over and under trees, scramble over rocky paths, hop over the muck holes and inevitably slip slide into them when you lost your footing.
Once we got there I had the strange experience of seeing something completely familiar from photos yet knowing I had never been there. It was like going to Stonehenge. And experienced hiker that I am, I remembered the cork screw but forgot the camera. You'll just have to take my word for it.