Latoria Creek Park - October 29, 2013

Directions
Car poolers should leave the centre at 9:15 to arrive at the trail head by 9:30. We'll be leaving one car at the public washrooms on Ocean Boulevard/Lagoon Road and starting the walk at the park entrance near Latoria Road/Wishart Rd.


Check the Royal Bay Walk - page 26 of Walk the West Shore.  We will be doing only part of this hike. We will walk through the delightful Latoria Creek Park, cross Metchosin Road and carry on down to Albert Head Lagoon .  There are usually basking seals and other aquatic life on the ocean side of the lagoon and ducks, swans, and herons etc on the land side - not sure what life there will be on the naturalist beach!

Undaunted, we will carry on to walk along the beach to the car we left near the washrooms.


Google map to Latoria Creek Park Trail Head.  Driving time about 15 mins from the centre


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Track


View Latoria Park to Esquimalt Lagoon - October 29, 2013 in a larger map

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Pictures


Previous hike report
A slight hiccough on the map front, but our group met up at the trail head opposite the intersection of Latoria and Wishart Roads at around 9:30 as planned.

The walk went as planned, so here are our floral finds for this week including my draft (or daft) attempts at identifying them.  Please help; if you recognize these plants, please drop us an email.

This was a different red berried plant than the red swam berry from last week. My guess - Red Huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium).

This was clearly the Oregon Grape, though, with its fruit ripening nicely.

We thought this was probably saxifrage. Not sure.

Common horsetail (Equisetum arvense) - pretty sure. A horsetail at least.

We were pretty sure these two were dogwoods but I'm not so sure now. Is it a marsh violet, perhaps?  Maybe the one above is a marsh violet and the lower one that we thought was the same is a dogwood?

In any event this was Albert Head Lagoon.  We had a break watching a couple of seals and a family of sea otters.  Even the seal pretended to be a sack of concrete or a log until we could verify movement and identify it as a seal!

We walked back via the park, rather than Pelican Drive.  One of our intrepid hikers had a close encounter with a wasp on the community funded foot bridge close to Metchosin Road - a bit too close, in fact, and ended up with four stings.  Sting relief cream is now added to our hiking first-aid kit!- (and another stable door is tardily closed).

This is a great hike of about 60 minutes with some altitude variation, including steps, but with smooth hiking surfaces.  A brief beach sojourn with some nature watching potential is an added attraction.