Exploring the East: Near Mer Bleue

Hintonburg is in west Ottawa. And that means most of the shopping and hikes I go on are in the western part of the city. It's true: west, west, and...west! OK, well maybe it's debatable whether Gatineau Park is in the "west" (it starts near the centre and then sortof meanders west) but, generally speaking, my life is in the west.

But this past Earth Day, Glosette Girl, Margot and I decided to shake it up a little. We ventured east to the Mer Bleue area of Ottawa for some trail walking. We used to visit this area a lot when we lived at our old house in Quebec. Now...not so much.

That's too bad as the main Mer Bleue trail is really interesting. It consists of a long boardwalk over a tundra-like bog that is normally found in the arctic. I think there are also cool bug-eating plants in there. But to avoid the crowds, instead of the main trail we tried a lesser known one right nearby, which meanders through a forest.*

It was supposed to just be a Sunday stroll but Margot really got into the Earth-day spirit and decided we should pick up any garbage we found along the way. Picking up garbage wasn't on the agenda so I didn't pack any garbage bags. Luckily for Margot eating was on the agenda and I was mighty hungry so...

No that's not what I meant! GROSS! What I meant to say was that we brought a couple of bags of snacks (M&Ms, nuts, etc.) and we were able to improvise a few garbage bags by eating the food in them first!

Yeesh.

It was slow going as it turned out there was a surprisingly large amount of trash on the trail and Margot wanted to pick it all up.** But no one ever said that saving the planet one M&M and pistachio bag at a time was going to be easy!

The fruits of our impromptu labour

* Starts at the P20 parking lot.

** We had to skip some of the bigger garbage items on the trail as we didn't have anywhere to put them. This caused a mini crisis for Margot as she wanted to pick everything up. She really is an all-or-nothing girl.