A Fawn on Fawn Avenue

Tracking Animals

Day 18, 15.4 miles Boy Scout camp

The morning walk is beautiful! It’s chilly and dry as we climb up on an esker along the Mondeaux river. We enjoy the views over the water and fantasize about soda machines at the dam. There aren’t any, but the garbage can at the other side is almost as good. It’s the little things, you know.

The next miles are challenging since it’s lower terrain and full of mud again. It’s just tedious to pick your way through it. Trying to find rocks, tree roots, and shallow firmer mud to step on versus deep slimy mud which will eat your shoes. It requires more mental energy and patience.

What is cool about mud though is that you can see boot and animal prints. And we see some awesome fresh bear prints. Followed by an awesome fresh bear poop. We half expect to see the bear walking in front of us but we never quite catch up.

In the end, we are relieved to hit a gravel road segment with more solid footing for a while. With the road comes a more open view and we see a deer in the distance. It’s acting a bit weird and we wonder why. Then we see it. The tiniest little fawn appears out of the grass. At first, we think it’s a cat but the legs are too tall. We’ve never seen a deer so small!

We keep our distance hoping they will both disappear in the fields but the fawn is unsteady and moving slow. The mom darts away, maybe to distract us, so we eventually continue walking. We take a quick photo (with zoom) as we pass by the fawn in the grass and move on along. We don’t want to cause any more stress. It’s so precious! Just a little while further we see the name of our road; Fawn avenue!

We see another hiker coming towards us with her dog and give her a heads up. Then we see the tiniest little baby turtle crossing the road. I pick it up only to deposit it quickly in the grass to help it continue on its way out of the danger of passing cars.

Our last section of trail is rated easy but has several downed trees we struggle to get around. The Boy Scouts have developed a little campsite in the woods with some log benches to sit on. We get there pretty early and enjoy our afternoon rest. I’m in no rush with this trail so why push?

Affiliate Disclosure

This website contains affiliate links, which means The Trek may receive a percentage of any product or service you purchase using the links in the articles or advertisements. The buyer pays the same price as they would otherwise, and your purchase helps to support The Trek's ongoing goal to serve you quality backpacking advice and information. Thanks for your support!

To learn more, please visit the About This Site page.

Comments 1

  • TeriB : May 26th

    i want to do the ice age trail as my first long distance hike. I’m loving these posts.

    Reply

What Do You Think?