July 12, 2008 Saturday
We arrived in Naniamo around 8am stopping at Ladysmith city park on the way. The town was having Dragon Boat races in the harbor. A serene and tidy town with a lovely downtown area. We stopped at Perkin’s coffee shop for a cuppa. Their personnel were in training and the service was painfully slow. It took longer to get a cuppa than to drink it. Time was not wasted waiting, I spoke to one of the participants of the dragon boats and she informed me that years ago, this type of exercise was to “rid the tribes of negative things from the past”, but now it’s just for fun. There are many levels of competition and this was a recreational level racing day.
Onward to Parksville in hopes we’d get a campsite at Rathtrevor Campground. Stopping at the information visitor center to inquire of availabilities we were kindly informed “slim to none” but advised that Englishman Campground was nearby. Years ago we were unable to secure a site at Rathtrevor and had to camp at Englishman (the overflow campground).
Ignoring their advice, or just hoping they’d be wrong, we took a chance and drove into Rathtrevor and luckily we had our choice of 1-2 nights. We were there early in the day to enjoy this lovely BC Park.
Rathtrevor (highly recommended) is a large campground just south of Parksville. There are more than 100 campsites and it has many amenities: beach, easy trails, beach-combing, views of the straight of Georgia. Their picnic tables and high iron grates at the campsites were fairly well secluded from your neighbor. They also have convenient clean showers and flush and outhouse toilets. This is a great place for a weekend or weeklong family get-away.
Most of our time spent walking the trail and sitting on the smooth rocky shore taking pleasure in the scenery.
We arrived in Naniamo around 8am stopping at Ladysmith city park on the way. The town was having Dragon Boat races in the harbor. A serene and tidy town with a lovely downtown area. We stopped at Perkin’s coffee shop for a cuppa. Their personnel were in training and the service was painfully slow. It took longer to get a cuppa than to drink it. Time was not wasted waiting, I spoke to one of the participants of the dragon boats and she informed me that years ago, this type of exercise was to “rid the tribes of negative things from the past”, but now it’s just for fun. There are many levels of competition and this was a recreational level racing day.
Onward to Parksville in hopes we’d get a campsite at Rathtrevor Campground. Stopping at the information visitor center to inquire of availabilities we were kindly informed “slim to none” but advised that Englishman Campground was nearby. Years ago we were unable to secure a site at Rathtrevor and had to camp at Englishman (the overflow campground).
Ignoring their advice, or just hoping they’d be wrong, we took a chance and drove into Rathtrevor and luckily we had our choice of 1-2 nights. We were there early in the day to enjoy this lovely BC Park.
Rathtrevor (highly recommended) is a large campground just south of Parksville. There are more than 100 campsites and it has many amenities: beach, easy trails, beach-combing, views of the straight of Georgia. Their picnic tables and high iron grates at the campsites were fairly well secluded from your neighbor. They also have convenient clean showers and flush and outhouse toilets. This is a great place for a weekend or weeklong family get-away.
Most of our time spent walking the trail and sitting on the smooth rocky shore taking pleasure in the scenery.
A word about BC Provincial Parks: We’ve stayed at several provincial parks on our previous visits through BC and Vancouver Island. With the exception of Skutz, most have been quiet, well-maintained, clean and stocked with immediate camping necessities (toilet paper, trash area kept up), and park personnel readily accessible and friendly. We cannot say enough good things about these reasonably priced parks.
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