MYSTIC BEACH

For the first camping trip of 2020, we headed to Mystic Beach to do some beach camping. We’d been feeling cooped up with all the COVID 19 measures, but the BC provincial parks had opened up, and we decided to go for an adventure.

Mystic Beach is the first beach on the Juan de Fuca Trail, if you are hiking south to north. It is about a 2.3 km (1.4 mile) hike from the parking lot at the China Beach day use area.

The Juan de Fuca trail is 47 km (29 mile) long and runs along the south coast of Vancouver Island, on the west coast of Canada, from China Beach near Jordan River to Botanical Beach near Port Renfrew. It’s a tough trail, but stunningly beautiful! While I haven’t hiked the entire trail, I’ve done a few different sections of it and completing the whole thing is definitely on my list.

Mystic Beach has some amazing features that makes it a favourite with those who are doing the Juan de Fuca trail and those that just want to make it a day trip (or at least it’s a favourite of mine 🤣).

At the north end of the beach there is a sea cave that gets cut off from the main beach at high tide. Visitors to the beach build Inuksuit (plural of Inuksuk) all along the cave walls and on the big driftwood logs that are left by the winter storms. Some of them get washed away with the high tide and some endure for the entire season.

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These pictures of the the Inuksuit are from my visit last year, as there haven’t been as many visitors to the beach this year due to COVID 19 restrictions, and the Inuksuit are much fewer than usual.

At the south end of the beach, there is a waterfall that sprays out from the cliff face, making it perfect to run underneath. The water is very refreshing (absolutely freezing) after a sweaty hike.

It’s a bit hard to see the waterfall in the picture, but if you look closely you can see the water droplets! When the tide comes in, you can run in the surf and under the waterfall at the same time. This waterfall is truly magical, it might be the reason the beach is called Mystic Beach—or maybe that’s because of the way the mist shrouds the beach in the morning.

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One of the things that really struck me this visit was how much the beach had changed from last year. Most of the giant driftwood logs had been swept away, and the new ones were much higher up on the beach. The winter storms had also covered the beach in rocks. Normally there is a band of smooth beach rock in the middle of the beach around the high tide mark, and then dark grey sand down closer to the low tide mark. This year, most of the beach was covered in rock.

Mystic Beach keeps creeping into my writing—both as itself, and as inspiration for the places that I create—and so it’s a delight to be able to share it with you.

Ginny’s Crush, West Coast Romance Book 2, which is scheduled to release September 2020, will have a bonus novelette—Enchanting Elaine—which features some very important moments on Mystic Beach.

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And if that isn’t enough exposure to the sea cave and Inuksuit, then stay tuned for Divining Celeste, West Coast Romance Rivals Book 1, which is currently in draft 1, because there is a serious love connection at Mystic Beach.

We spent two nights camping on Mystic Beach, including a day hike to Bear Beach—the next beach on the Juan de Fuca trail when hiking south to north—which I will feature in an upcoming post.

Stay tuned to see where I wander next.

This adventure took place 17-19 June 2020