Vancouver Island Provincial Parks

June 6 – June 17, 2022, Vancouver Island, BC.

Vancouver Island has a lot of parks. According to information I found on the web there are 128 Provincial Parks (this includes Marine Provincial Parks and a few Ecological Reserves but doesn’t include many other types of parks like regional parks) on the Island. And as far as I can tell, all of these parks are free to visit. Some parks have campsites. Fees to camp run anywhere from $13 to $35. In US dollars this is from $10 to $28 – quite a deal!

This, of course, was great for us. We love hiking and looking for wildlife. And sometimes a park is just the best place to chill for the day or to take care of business. We hardly made a dent in the 128 Provincial Parks on the island. But here are a few we visited with my honest impression of each one.

(All pics are click to enlarge. Once you have them enlarged you can view them in a slide show. Also, you can hover over the pics to see captions.)

Goldstream Provincial Park

The Trans Canada Highway runs right through Goldstream Provincial Park. This is how we first noticed it, driving up the highway en route to somewhere else. When we decided to make an about-face and head back the way we came we took the time to stop. The park is an old-growth temperate rainforest. In the fall you can see thousands of Chum Salmon swimming upstream to spawn. The park has a couple of nice waterfalls too. Since Trans Canada runs right through the park and a median runs down the center of the highway, it is hard to get from one side to the other. But if one is parked on the east side you can traverse a drain culvert on the northeast side of the park to reach Niagara Falls on the west side of the highway. We were able to drive to the Goldstream falls after leaving the east side of the park and heading south.

Niagara Falls. Just a short hike from the parking lot on the northeast side of the park once you walk through the culvert.

There was a small parking lot along the road on the southwest side of the highway where we found a trailhead and a longer hike to Goldstream Falls. It was a bit of a strenuous hike for us but we like to push ourselves occasionally.

Juan De Fuca Provincial Park

Juan de Fuca Provincial Park lies along the Pacific coastline of the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the southwestern side of Vancouver Island. A visitor center employee in Victoria recommended that we travel this part of the island. And although beautiful, it wasn’t the easiest park to explore. One of the main features of this park is a 29 mile The Juan de Fuca Trail which runs along the coast. People can day hike parts of the trail but many also do overnight backpacking trips along the trail.

There are 4 different spots to access this trail. We explored 3 of them over 3 days. Our first trailhead, China Beach, was a nice walk with some mud to an unimpressive beach. I was looking forward to our second trailhead, Sombrio Beach, because it seemed to have more features, including a suspension bridge and a hidden waterfall.  It is also a popular spot for beach camping and surfing. From the parking lot, we took the trail to the right to reach the suspension bridge. The bridge was nice but from there we found so much mud on this trail we finally gave up trying to gingerly step around it and just started slogging through it. The trail led to a pretty beach covered with slippery algae-covered boulders. I gave up counting how many times I fell. We tried to follow the trail across the beach and back up into the woods but the path from the beach was steep and muddy and led into thick woods. We turned around. On our way back to the parking lot we saw teams of young people going down the trail to the left with coolers and tents. We peeked down the path they were taking to see that this was the easy way to get to the beach. Everyone was setting up for a night of beach camping. Our third trailhead was my favorite. It was an easy walk down to Botanical Beach, the view was nice and we were able to do some tide pooling.

The path from the China Beach Trailhead.

I tried to capture how surreal looking all the moss hanging from trees was.

The suspension bridge leading from the Sombrio Beach Trailhead.

The path, straight up and muddy.

Surfing on Sombrio Beach.

Sombrio Beach.

Harlequin ducks at Sombrio Beach.

Botanical Beach.

Tidepool Sculpin.

Purple Shore Crabs.

Aggregating anemone.

Spring Beach Recreation Site

So this isn’t a Provincial Park. We stopped at the visitor center in Lake Cowichan on our way to somewhere else. We asked the guy minding the office if there were any good places to hike in the area. He directed us to the Spring Beach Recreation Site. It was a lovely little hike next to a beautiful lake.

Spring Beach Lake.

Tree at Spring Beach.

Tree growing over stump.

Car needs a little work.

Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park

We often times look for parks where we can just literally park for the day. This is how we got to Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park. We needed a day to check off some items on our chore list and to work on the blog. The parking lot at this park provided us with a nice place to spend the morning. In the afternoon after we finished with our tasks, we finally exited Ballena Blanca and headed to the beach to see what this park was all about.

What we found was beach and more beach stretching way out into the Strait of Georgia. At low tide, the water retreats for almost a kilometer (0.621371 mile). It was a great place for tidepooling!

The park also has a campground among a grove of mature Douglas fir trees.

Rathtrevor Beach.

Beach art.

Beach art.

There are several types of kelp on the beach.

Tidepool life.

Eastern Cottontail. A cute but invasive species. A sign instructed people not to feed them.

MacMillan Provincial Park

The highlight of MacMillan Provincial Park is Cathedral Grove. This old-growth forest is populated with towering ancient Douglas-fir trees – some more than 800 years old.

One of my favorite features of this park was the boardwalk. But the boardwalk doesn’t only serve to save people from having to trudge through puddles of mud, it also keeps the throngs of people who visit here on the trail and protects the trees.

BTW – this is another park with a highway running right through. But unlike Goldstream, it only requires awareness and a brisk walk to get from one side to the other.

Cathedral Grove Boardwalk.

Stump.

Cameron Lake at Cathedral Grove.

This is mostly old-growth forest, which was never logged commercially. But many stumps have these telltale signs. Lumberjacks cut notches into the base of trees and insert a board to stand on, so they can cut higher.

Tree growing out of a stump.

Tallest Douglas Fir in this old-growth forest.

Elk Falls Provincial Park

One of the highlights of Elk Falls Provincial Park is crossing a huge suspension bridge to see Elk Falls. This falls streams straight down thundering into the Cambell River which runs through the middle of the park.

The park is also a big fishing destination and is ringed with trails. We hiked the Canyon View Trail which we had the impression was a loop. Right away we dreaded the return trip as the trail went down and down. After miles of hiking, the trail looped around and ran out. We ended up walking back on a paved highway which might have been pleasant if it wasn’t so hot and the highway so steep.

Walkway to the suspension bridge.

Elk Falls.

As we followed the Canyon View Trail it descended down into the canyon.

View of crystal clear water upriver from a bridge.

View downriver from the bridge.

Downstream view of Campbell River.

Despite muddy trails and steep trails, overall we enjoyed our visits to these parks. We might return to a few of them again or maybe just check out one of the other 123 Provincial Parks on Vancouver Island.