My husband and I love to find new parks and trails to hike on the weekends. Luckily a friend told me about a place that I've heard about for years but have never remembered to go to - Mystic Beach.
Found at the head of the Juan de Fuca trail (that's a long "u" in Fuca!), the hike to Mystic Beach is absolutely stunning. It's one of those places that I kick myself for having missed out on for so many years! I'm SO glad that I went, it easily became my favourite park to hike!
The walk to the beach takes an hour unless you're super speedy (though why would you speed, there is so much to see!!). The path is super "rooty" though so you do have to keep your eye on the ground so as not to take a tumble! There are man made wooden bridges, a suspension bridge and at the end of the hike is a staircase carved out of a fallen tree...a HUGE fallen tree!
Nearing the end but before we reached the beach we were treated to the sound of waves crashing against the shore. By this point I think I'd sweat at least 2 litres so the idea that the breezy coast was upon us could not have been more welcome!
The beach itself is beautiful. Sandy and rocky. Cliffs and tidepools. Waterfalls and caves! It was pretty busy that day (for the west coast) but we still managed to find ourselves a perfect spot in the shade where we had lunch.
One of the most interesting parts of the hike were all the different varieties of fungus that we found. I don't really know much about funghi so I certainly wasn't going to pick any, but it got me thinking that I really need to take a local mushrooming course to take advantage of the plethora we have in our west coast woods!
If you live on the island it's definitely worth checking out! We spent 4 hours there and I could have easily stayed longer!
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