Herring Cove

I had my first official full day off yesterday and boy, was it a nice treat.  We had been doing training every day for a week solid and I was tired.  But, never fear, I did adventure! 

One of my co-workers, Cailen, had the day off as well so we decided to go hiking.  We took her friend Ben along with us (he served as bear spray) and set off despite the clouds. 

The Herring Cove trailhead is at the end of the road (truly the end of the road, like you really can't go any further south from town), at the base of Bear Mountain.  It follows a beautiful creek up to Bear Lake.

There is a really pretty loop trail that goes around the lake's edge.  It even passes through quite a large area of muskeg (a type of bog with a higher pH that stunts the growth of plants, creating miniature blueberry bushes and very short trees). 

While we did see some signs of bear activity (don't worry, didn't see anything recent), it was only a few dug up areas in the muskeg where a bear had been foraging for roots. 

It was a strenuous hike but the surroundings certainly made up for it.  Whoever designed the trail did an incredible job.  They made great use of natural rocks as stairs and the trail even passes between two halves of a gigantic broken boulder that now has trees growing out of it.  Wish I had gotten a picture of that.  Oh well, next time!