Wow - if you want a GREAT walk in the woods with your furry friend(s), take a trip up Sechelt Inlet Road to Hidden Grove Park.

I've hiked this park for about 6 years now and it just keeps getting better. One of the best examples of the right way to do trail signage on the Coast: at every. single. junction. a laminated map is posted with clear markings to show you where you are. At one point today, Diane and I thought we'd take a shortcut back to the lot, and I had this nagging suspicion that we hadn't paid in sweat for the lonnnnng downhill on the back of the Red Trail, and sure enough, before we had taken two steps, here was this sign:

It's like the signs in Disneyland on the Heart Attack Rides.

Yeah... I am some glad the trail designers and sign-makers kept us from plunging on to the road right around a blind S curve, with no shoulders on the road and a whopping 1KM still left to go to get back into the park.

We usually take a combination of the purple and green routes, with a side trip out to the Hydro line for a short walk southwest for a beautiful view of Sechelt's isthmus. If you take this jaunt, make sure to head down the hill a bit after the crest and get out on the second knoll down and to the right - it's a stunningly different view, just 20 feet away.

Anyway, today we figured after a month of being felled by viruses it was time to take the longer Red Trail, which was a gorgeous surprise. Long, looping trails with a soft, peaty feel to them (awesome for dogs with sensitive paws: Pompidou throws off his usual grumpy ala francais mood and positively gallivants through the forest when he gets such a nice feel underfoot) make this a super-quiet trail. Plus it's around the back of the hill away from Sandy Hook and heading out towards Tuwanek, so car noises are less too. At one point it was so (freakishly) quiet, I heard a crow fly through the forest over my head, quick caressing wing beats that sound like knives feathering down into the hill. It reminded me of the old Pink Floyd song, Money. I used to sit and listen to that album endlessly, and the sound of the footsteps running through the terminal from right to left was just how that crow sounded. Stereophonic.

The trail had plenty of other rewards as well: fungi as big as a person's head, emerging from rotting stumps like axe heads; dollops of mushrooms collecting in frothy groups where the light stroked the mossy stops of fallen timber; and Spanish Moss fairly dripping from trees living and dead both. Here's one I call "Nature's Yarn Bombing":

Nature's Way of Yarn Bombing

The entire hour we hiked we only saw two other hikers with their dogs - one exiting as we entered, and one entering as we exited. That's some kind of crowded on the Sunshine Coast.

Jiggeldy iPhone shot of Much Rambunctiousness.

So now we're home, content, and feeling snooze-ish, with the Sunday Globe & Mail in hand and the last warm light of the afternoon to take us out of the weekend. Now that's a fine life.

Spanish Moss Fu Man Chu
I hiked so long, I grew a moustache.