On our second day at Pukaskwa, we hiked to the suspension bridge over the White River and a nice view of Chigamiwinigum Falls. This was unreal. We left our campsite at 7 am after a hardy breakfast. This was one of the best hikes I’ve ever done. The suspension bridge was worth marching through the +30 heat. It took us about 3 hours to reach the gorge. My youngest, Teeryn was the first one on the bridge. She sprinted out onto it without hesitation. I joined her quickly. We had a lot of fun crossing the bridge back and forth. My oldest kid, Hunter and Arielle didn’t like the heights as much. Hunter spent a lot of time on the bridge crawling. We poked some good fun at her. Arielle didn’t make it past the point where the bridge doesn’t have land underneath it LOL. We all still had fun. We saw some neat biodiversity and were fortunate to see a lot of ruffed grouse and toads along the way. We also bumped into a couple – Joe and Trisha – from our hometown of Lively a few hours into the trail. It was neat that the only people we saw that day were from the same place we were. We shared some good laughs and stories.
In total, we hiked 20.53-km that day in seven hours. Needless to say, we were exhausted and chilled out the rest of the remaining days at Pukaskwa. Our last day at Pukaskwa saw a massive thunderstorm roll in and send four-foot waves crashing into the shoreline. It all cleared by the evening and everyone was treated to a spectacular sunset filled with various breaking formations of clouds and a range of bright colours.
We headed to Ivanhoe Provincial Park for our last two days. It was an awesome drive for wildlife as we saw quite a few bears, moose, eagles and cranes. We made a pit stop at Potholes Provincial Park. This day-use park was a fun-filled side experience. There were blueberries the size of golf balls there and clumps and clumps of them everywhere. The potholes rock formations and waterfalls were unique and interesting to see up close.