Our Top 3 RV Campgrounds on Vancouver Island (plus: Sailing!)

Hi everyone. So in the last five years that we've had our Roadtrek Zion camper van, we've been to Vancouver Island quite a few times. Yeah many times. Yeah and we really enjoyed those trips. So in this video we thought it might be a good idea to select a few of our favorite campsite areas on Vancouver Island and instead of doing top five as usual we thought we'd just pick three. Forced ourselves into top three because I can tell you there's a lot of like honorable mentions in this. And of course if you're going to go to the island you're going to have to go on BC Ferries which at times can have its challenges just getting reservations and of course if the weather is not great it might mean the ferries cancelled. So just another little barrier to get there. But Vancouver Island is a wonderful place. It's roughly 500 kilometers long from Victoria to Port Hardy. It's just beautiful. We also have a little bonus footage at the end of the video. Yes I recently completed a sailing trip with my friend Tim on his boat to a wonderful area called Portland Island. So we've put a little montage at the end as Miggy said. It's just kind of a video bonus if you stay to the end. So we hope you enjoyed this video. So we're actually going to start the list in reverse order. So starting with number three. Yeah so number three is Juan de Fuca Provincial Park. In terms of location Juan de Fuca Provincial Park is on the west coast of southern Vancouver Island. It's about 80 kilometers or 50 miles around a one and a half hour drive from Victoria and probably about an hour and 45 minutes if you're coming in at the Swartz Bay BC Ferries terminals. China Beach Campground has a total of 79 campsites. All the sites except one are reservable from May 12th to September 3rd this year and after that all sites are first come first serve until September 30th when the campground closes for the season. And from what we were able to see while we were driving through most of the campsites were treed and very private. In terms of campground services there's pit toilets, drinking water taps, obviously garbage and recycling bins throughout the campground. The closest sanded dump however is located at French Beach Provincial Park which is about 20 minutes back towards Victoria. It's on the main road on the left hand side so it's a very handy spot to pop by as you leave the park and if you need to empty your gray or black tanks. In terms of access to recreational activities obviously you have a beautiful beach. There is a trail from the campground it's about one kilometer that leads to second beach and it's a very quiet and beautiful beach. The trail down is a little bit steep and has some stairs. I think for most people it should be fine but if you have any challenges it might be a little bit difficult to get up and down those stairs. You can also hike along the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail which is I think is about a 47 kilometer or 29 mile trail that runs all the way out to Botanical Beach near Port Renfrew. Now we haven't done the whole trail I think we walked probably the first nine kilometers so nine kilometers one way nine kilometers back. It's just beautiful walking through the forest over a variety of boardwalks there's you know some bridges. Many bridges. Yeah some steep stairs though too so for folks with knee issues you might notice that. We went to Bear Beach that's B-E-A-R not B-A-R-E. It's spectacular. Unusual beach that we're aware of. You're also actually able to camp at some of the beaches along the way so it could make for a nice two-day backpacking trip. One additional note is that unlike some of the other southern Vancouver Island campgrounds and parks this particular park actually does close for the season so you may want to note the closing date. We do have though an alternative is French Beach their campground is not that far away and is actually open all year round and it's really kind of similar. Okay so number two on our list is Loveland Bay Provincial Park and for those of you who actually watched our most recent Vancouver Island trip video and we've linked it here we really enjoyed our short one-night trip to that park and we really wish that we could have stayed longer there. We were almost saddened because we we only had one night and we tried to fit as much in and the day we arrived and the day we left as we could but spectacular beautiful on Campbell Lake. Yeah just a great place to stay we really enjoyed it. Loveland Bay is located a short distance from the city of Campbell River in central Vancouver Island and is about a two hour or 178 kilometer drive from departure bay ferry terminal in Nanaimo and the last 12 kilometers or so are on gravel forestry roads. It was bumpy but it was fairly doable in our low clearance van. Yeah we had no issues we just drove slowly unfortunately it wasn't very dusty which was nice. And a special note here and we made that note on the video as well is that the usual access which is from highway 28 from Campbell River towards Gold River that access is closed now because there's some work being done at the John Hart Dam for about six years so you're not going to be able to access that way for a long time so basically you have to take an alternate route which is to travel on highway 19 from Campbell River going north and then you just follow the park signs. Yeah it's all marked out we had no problems. In terms of the campsites there's about I think 54 front country campsites 52 are reservable reservations are actually up until October 6th. The campsite itself I think closes October 9th this year so it is definitely a campsite I think you want to make reservations for it looks like it's really busy. It's very popular. About half the sites are actually lakefront and I think we were in site 16 and we had a beautiful if you look at our video we had a beautiful campsite right on the water. In our opinion probably sites 1 to 26 are the best they're kind of on the southwest side of the campground. Turn right when you come in. Yeah and it's a newer section there were 21 new sites added in 2021 so the whole campground has a you know a lot of the campground has a very modern clean brand new feel which is really kind of nice. And there's also a public use beach area as well for people who don't have waterfront sites. In terms of campground services they have some very clean very clean yeah they're kind of brand new made from plastic so pit toilets they have you know disposal receptacle for gray water recycling all the standard things you'd expect. I think the only thing that the campground didn't have was actually potable water so your options are of course to make sure you've got water when you get there or if you choose to you could probably take it from the lake but of course you'd have to filter it or boil it. Yeah if you're comfortable doing that but it's probably easier just to bring your own drinking water. Now there is no sand to dump at this park so we actually dumped our tanks at the Elk Falls Provincial Park in Campbell River which was a you know in our case was in the direction we were heading so it worked out well. In terms of recreational activities if you watch the video you'll see we I at least did a little bit of paddling we went swimming in the lake there's some hiking or I would say light to moderate mountain biking trails very close there's a there's a Snowden forest area it's called the Snowden demonstration area or the Snowden recreational area and there's about 100 kilometers of trails so it's it's quite extensive. Yeah so we did a lot of things for us there's some you know light hiking you could do the mountain bike trails just walking around you could do the trails if you're if you rode a mountain bike paddling swimming it was just really nice we really enjoyed it. We actually lucked out and got a last minute cancellation but sadly they didn't cancel for two days. Yes that's right yeah because otherwise we wouldn't have got a lakefront site it's again like we said earlier it's a very popular park. Okay drum roll please. So our our favorite place to camp on Vancouver Island you know and often we get people viewers sending us an email asking where they should camp for British Columbia or Alberta and if they're going to go over to the island we always recommend this place and Pacific Rim National Park and specifically the Greenpoint Campground. The long beach unit of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is located around halfway between Euclid and Tofino on Vancouver Island's wild west coast. This area is very popular with miles of sandy beaches and big surf and it's particularly popular with surfers. It's about a two hour and 40 minute drive from Departure Bay BC Ferries Terminal in Nanaimo or about 185 kilometers and the nearby towns of Tofino and Euclid both about 20 minutes drive away offer great dining shopping sightseeing and recreational activities as well. We've literally walked for hours on the beach going down for sunsets early morning watching all the birds it's just beautiful. We could spend hours just walking up and down the sandy beaches. Yeah it's stunning. Just an amazing place to be. Greenpoint Campground has 94 drive-in campsites and 20 walk-in campsites for tenters. The campsites are all very private and trade and located on a bluff above Long Beach. Some campsites on the ocean side offer full-on or peekable views of the beach and all drive-in sites have 15 and 30 amp electrical hookups and are reservable but the campground this year closes on October 14th and sites are reservable up until that date and it's a very popular campground so it's a good idea to plan your visit well in advance. Yeah we just as an example we were looking at early May and only the early first week of May there was a space otherwise June, July, August were just booked fully and I wouldn't be surprised if September was largely booked as well. The campground has washroom and shower buildings garbage and recycling and they do have a sandy dump and a manned gate house for check-in. In terms of recreational activities obviously the beach walking that we spoke to, surfing something that we haven't tried and road biking too and there's actually some paved trails that go through the park all the way to Tofino or Euclid so some very nice cycling if that's something you're interested in as well. Yeah and we really just enjoy walking on the beach mostly you can go for miles and miles and sometimes if you have binoculars or a very strong zoom camera you might be able to see some of the sea lions sunning on the island. I think they're probably closer to like a kilometer or two kilometers out so it's often a challenge. So a couple of notes about this campground. This past year we've had some bad fires in BC and one of the bad ones on the island affected the main highway access between Parksville and Port Alberni. Highway 4. Yeah and so it basically there was a lot of issues there, there were some closures and I understand that as of the end of August it's been fully open to two-way traffic. There's probably still going to be some disruption in terms of traffic so you might want to check that carefully before you go and the best place to go to check the highway status is drivebc.ca. We did actually add one honorable mention and it's a little you know out of the different it's in a little different category but in the concept of you know the nicest places we've camped in I would also include Cape Scott Provincial Park into that and that was a camping trip that my friend Michael and I did. It's a backpacking trip but if you're prepared to hike in roughly 17 kilometers on a moderately rugged trail you'll see some of the most beautiful rugged beaches. We stayed at a place called Nell's Bite so it's spectacular. I wandered down Experiment Bite and then off to the lighthouse and there's it's just a beautiful area it's just stunning. It's probably as beautiful as the Pacific Rim Park is but even more remote feeling so we had to throw that in as an honorable mention but you're gonna have to get your hiking boots pretty muddy to get there. And okay so yeah and and finally we're going to show you a little clip of Gordon's sailing trip to Portland Island. Yeah so I recently got a chance to do a couple days trip with my friend Tim on his sailboat there's about a three and a half or four hour cruise. We went to Portland Island which is just a little ways off the Swartz Bay ferry terminal and it's a gulf island it's also a federal park which was kind of nice and we actually moored in a little bay on the northern part of the island. Now most of the time we actually were motoring there in a sailboat we sailed a little bit just the way the winds were and the tides it was more advantageous for us to to motor there but beautiful place. Stayed a couple nights wandered the island a little bit it's a reasonably big island so if you ever get a chance to get there and the only way to get there of course is by water certainly a place I would suggest you visit. There are campsites on the island and it's just spectacular so I hope you enjoy a little clip used to be a leper colony there. Still a few buildings and things remaining. The city spits are out there. I keep forgetting this mean sails up here and half the time when I stand up I bang my head. So Tim's just starting to set stern anchor we've already got an anchor set out on the bow. It's a very nice composting toilet with toilet paper luxury on Portland Island. It's Tim's boat right in the front and then a couple dinghies on the dock there. My turn to cook tonight so we did garlic mushrooms and a vegan butter with some parsley a little bit extra butter off on the side just for my bread. How is it Tim? It's excellent. A warm salmon salad with potatoes some lettuce garlic looks good. We had a little extra leftover. It's good. reservations in advance although as you know we tend to do things kind of last minute and and we have been very lucky to be able to get some sites at the last minute and some really nice sites as well. Vancouver Island has so many places we've stayed at wonderful parks we've stayed at nice rec sites we've stayed at regional parks that are really beautiful so tough for us to list it down to our three. I know some of the people we've met from Vancouver Island have a big list of places that we have yet to visit so we'd welcome everyone sharing those ideas. Yeah we're looking forward to exploring more of the island. So we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel if we haven't done so already and we will see you next time. We'll see you next time.