Staying In Shape With A Hike And A Long Walk

Staying in shape? How about “trying to get in shape for heading down south?”  Whatever!  I’ve been on a bit of a fitness kick for the past 10 days or so which means I’m walking or hiking about twice as much as I used to. I still go for a daily hike with Paulette and Rylie but I’ve been adding another long walk with Rylie each day to make my daily goal of 10,000 (approx. 5 miles) steps. So far, so good, I’m over 10K steps each day and I’m tracking them using the new Apple Health App.

Heading down the long trail to the Cowichan River

It was a beautiful fall day here on Vancouver Island with sunny skies and high of around 68F. We headed off for Glenora Park on the Cowichan River well before 10am yesterday so we could get our hike in before noon. It was a nice walk through the forest with some steep hills and killer steps to climb to get from the river back up to the higher level trail.  The Cowichan River is still quiet as we didn’t see any salmon swimming upstream but that’ll change for sure by month’s end.

My starting point was up on top of the hill behind the homes you can see

After getting back home and having lunch and a bit of a rest I began to think about where I should go for an afternoon walk as I was still about 4K steps short of my goal. I decided to walk from our house down the hill and head toward a long road that bisects the farms in the valley below where we live. It’s always a nice walk I enjoy and it’s very safe as there are very few vehicles. The road is 1 mile there and back and the only traffic that I ever see on it seems to be from the few local farm homes.

The long straight road I like to walk down in the valley near our home

After walking down the busy Cowichan Bay Road for a few hundred yards I was glad to turn onto the quiet street that dead-ends at a farm about  a 1/2 mile down the road. Yesterday on my walk I never encountered 1 vehicle all the way to the end and back.

A local vineyard sells grapes, apples and pears out of a shed by the road

Just a hundred or so yards down the road there’s a local vineyard.  It’s open for sampling wine but is closed on Sundays. Instead, the owner has a garage where he sells apples, grapes and pears on a honor system.  The doors of the garage are wide open all day so I walked in and took a quick look around.

I liked this sign!

All of the apples and pears were selling for $1 lb. All you have to do is weigh the fruit on the scale and put your money into a slot in a box. There was even a small change purse there just in case you needed it.  There are more than a half-dozen vineyards near our home that we could probably walk to but in all the time we’ve lived here I’ve only ever been into 1 store.  And, that was to buy Balsamic Vinegar.

An Island Farms dairy farm I walked by

It was a nice way to get my exercise in for the day and as soon as I got home having accomplished my goal with 10,828 steps I flopped down in a Lazy Boy, turned on the TV and watched a few NFL games I’d been recording on our DVR. All in all, it was a pretty good day!

Thanks for visiting!