Day 28 1/30/17 - Finlayson Mt. Hike - Disc Golf - Ferry Back To Seattle

Son Brent and I were out of hotel early off to a hike.  We decided to hike Mt. Finlayson Northwest of the City of Victoria.

Our hike was steep and gave me a great strenuous hike for my training.  Although we didn't hike to the tip top we hiked for an hour up and the last section you needed to often use hands for balance or to assist in helping yourself up.

About 2 mikes and 800 feet of elevation was a great way to condition wearing my 20 pound daypack.

Above is Mt. Finlayson, or the majority of what you climb.

The forest is lush in a variety of green moss and ferns.  Here you can see the trees are covered with a moss.  This is the north side of the mountain and doesn't get much sun, none this time of year.

This tree has moss and mini ferns growing on it. 

This dead tree is in the middle of the hike and you can see the interesting design from being hit and damaged from hikers over the years.

Down below near the river we parked near where there is hanging moss that reminded me of Spanish Moss the way it hangs, but it isn't, as it is lush green from so much moisture. 

Upon getting back to the bottom we decided to hike over to (under the highway) to a waterfall.  You actually hike under the Trans Canadian Highway through the culvert with the outflow from the falls! This added to our hiking, but we are not done walking today even with this extra.

 

This is Niagra Falls, obviously not the one in the St Lawrence Seaway, but yet a very nice waterfall.

 

I use the U-Disc App to find disc golf courses.  So I found the one above that wasn't too far away from our hike.

The course is on private land and it is unconventional in that it didn't utilize baskets, as most other courses use.   Above you will see a hanging piece of pipe painted orange.  The goal of the game using them, is to gong the pipe with your disc.

Using pipe instead of baskets saves on the course cost and makes it easier to change the course around.

I was thrilled to hit the pipe on my second throw about 75 feet away on one hole.  Son Brent nearly got two hole in-one shots as the distances were not too far, but they were sure hilly, making up hill shots very difficult. 

On the next to the last hole the tee box is from the top of this cliff.  I walked up on the top to throw my disc and looked over and the drop caught my attention quickly.

This was the most interesting course with many ups and downs.  A few holes into the course I had wished I had tracked our game to find out the distance we walked with AllTrails App to know how much elevation we climbed overall.

Then before heading over to the ferry for our 2.5 hour trip back to Seattle for the night, we stopped for a late lunch.

We hadn't hit this brewpub, Moon Under Water yet.  After some food it was on to the ferry.

We sat in the main cabin for our trip with a light passenger load.  I picked up ATT for the ability to take and make calls as well as update mail and view social media.

Brent, Thanks for a great fun filled weekend exploring Seattle, WA and Victoria, BC 

Also a shoutout to Cousin Graeme Macaloney and family for their hospitality and friendship during our visit to Victoria.

PS. I didn't misspell Graeme's last name.  He spells it Macaloney and our family MacAloney. I will cover the MacAloney spellings under a separate blog post in the future. 

 

Brent

macaloney@hotmail.com