Matt and I went for a hike yesterday for the first time in a very long time. Hopefully we go again soon, but our weekdays are all busy (especially now that someone cares if I show up to work instead of working at home - my boss is back from Switzerland) and our weekends all fill up so quickly.

It was pretty nice to get outside for a day, though I was a little unprepared for this hike in particular as I've gotten pretty out of shape while in grad school. We climbed up Mount Finlayson, down the other side, and around the bottom to get back to where we started. The next five hikes I go on cannot have the words 'Mount', 'Mountain', 'Peak', or 'Fire Lookout' in their titles or descriptions. Gah. My legs were killing me by the time we got to the top of Mount Finlayson, but I made it (as evidenced by the picture to the right). The rest of the hike was alright from there, going down the other side was a lot more gentle (and a heck of a lot less crowded) and walking round the base was not too bad, if a bit boring (you walk along the side of the road for the last 3 kilometers or so to get back to the park). After that we tacked on an extra 1.2 kilometers by going over to the Goldstream Park Visitor Center and grabbing a nice icey cold Coke (mmm! forbidden pleasure while dieting but I earned it!) and checking out the area. This is apparently a great place to see the salmon run in the fall and I am going to try to get out there for that since I've never seen it before and won't probably have too many more chances. We didn't see any salmon, since it's way too early, but we did see a crayfish in the stream (ick! ick! ick!)

All in all a pretty good day. We went 8.6 kilometers total with an elevation gain of about 400 meters (all in the first 1.8 kilometers!). Today is not looking as good as I am pretty stiff and sore! D'oh. I did at least get the chance to update all my photos and add some new recipes last night since getting up and walking around was no fun.