{"id":609,"date":"2014-01-03T18:48:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T02:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/?p=609"},"modified":"2014-01-03T18:48:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-04T02:48:02","slug":"francis-point-provincial-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/francis-point-provincial-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Francis Point Provincial Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a beautiful day! The sun beckoned this morning so I forgot about any paperwork and headed outside to enjoy. You just can’t pass up sunny January days sitting inside. I decided to follow Sunshine Coast Tourism<\/a>‘s suggestion for #52weeksoftrails by heading to week #1 Francis Point Provincial Park.<\/p>\n

\"Francis<\/a> Francis Point is located in Pender Harbour…about 45 minutes from Arcturus Retreat. Well worth the drive! I’ve never taken the time to hike here before and I was pleasantly surprised. A perfect way to spend 15 minutes or an hour.\u00a0A place for clearing your head and just taking in the view.<\/p>\n

\"Francis<\/a>

Francis Point Provincial Park<\/p><\/div>\n

The entire park is along the Malaspina Strait in the Pacific Ocean and the sound of waves crashing on the ancient granite rocks is a soothing constant. This is easy hiking (not a cardio day) although hiking on the rocks makes for an uneven surface in places. There are 2 trails in the park. Either way, you start your journey here in front of a beautiful bay. Waves were crashing in the distance and I thought, “Love to see that up close”. Sure enough, the trail hugs the coastline and before I knew it I was getting a great view of crashing waves on huge granite boulders. Choosing to start left takes you down the longer trail that probably took 20 minutes to the surprise lighthouse at the end. Hard to say on time though…I just kept taking pictures and enjoying the view.<\/p>\n

\"Francis<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Arbutus<\/a>

Arbutus Trees<\/p><\/div>Rocky Pacific coastline is a sure sign to find arbutus trees. These are the coolest trees. They keep their leaves all year and shed their bark instead. It leaves a perfectly smooth orange texture that you won’t find anywhere else. These trees grow right out of the boulders where it is hard to imagine how any tree could take root.<\/p>\n

Circling back to my original starting point, I found the short trail that goes right. Just when I thought I wasn’t going to get any cardio for the day, I found the 50 or so steps that lead to an amazing viewpoint. So worth the burst of energy! I’ll definitely be back to enjoy these views. It would be very interesting to see it in different seasons…but I imagine it is always picture perfect when the sun shines bright.<\/p>\n

\"Hello<\/a>

Hello Pacific Ocean<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a beautiful day! The sun beckoned this morning so I forgot about Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,26,27,36,54],"tags":[80,76],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hiking","category-madeira-park","category-pender-harbour","category-provincial-parks","category-winter","tag-hiking","tag-sunshine-coast-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":627,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcturusretreat.ca\/wordp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}