embeetravels: Sooke Day Two

It was a bit overcast when we set off to go hiking. We had to stop first though, at a renowned bakery cafe called Shirley Delicious - it lived up to its name! The delicious part I mean. The cafe wasn't named after the baker, it was the area. I thought maybe the community was named after a person named Shirley, but no - it was named after a town named Shirley in England, in 1894, when they needed a name for the first post office.

The I in Shirley on the sign is meant to be the nearby lighthouse

It was hard to decide what to have with our coffee, there were so many yummy looking choices!

We had to try one of these muffins!

I had the chocolate hazelnut croissant and Brad had the almond - fabulous!

And we had to get these to go

While we were there, a woman with a camera was busy taking all kinds of photos. I asked her if it was for a magazine. No, she said, it was for her blog on niche places, and gave me the address. Have a look to see her much more professional photos! See if you can spot me in one of her pictures.

Suitably fuelled up, we drove on to the Mystic Beach trail parking lot. There we chatted with a couple heading off with their large white dog - a retriever / lab cross. The trail was through the forest, with many exposed roots, some boggy areas, boardwalks, and downed trees, so slow going. Soon though we caught up to the couple with the dog - he was lying down refusing to cross the metal suspension bridge. Later on, from other hikers, we learned that they turned back, unable to coax the dog to walk onto the bridge.

The metal walkway was hard on dogs paws...

Our first glimpse of the water

The waterfall at the south end of the beach

Walking towards the north end of the beach, we saw an otter running down to the water; it was so fast we didn't have a chance to get a photo. We watched him swimming, coming up for air, and diving down again.