On my recent trip to Vancouver Island, this hike was probably the highlight. As I’m always quite flexible with my travel plans, I was able to incorporate a last minute recommendation to visit Strathcona Provincial Park to complete one of the hiking trails there. Something special was in the air that morning, I put my mushroom earrings in, drove up the f&ked service road, and said to my best friend as we headed to the trailhead ‘I wonder what we will be talking about when we return to this point 20 kilometres later’… And we were blessed with one of the most incredible and diverse hikes we’ve done to date. My earrings had summoned hundreds upon hundreds of mushrooms, of all different colours and sizes. We saw four beautiful lakes, and skinny dipped in the most vibrant one (see pic 6). There were plenty of mountain views as well as glaciers on some of the larger ones. Finally, there was not a soul in sight. For an entire 20k we saw only two groups of people (who were lovely!). ...