Island Hopping - Gabriola Island - July 2009

Make no mistake, we are still very active within the business community but as a family we choose one of our favorite hobbies - to explore our new surroundings and in doing so, we have been able to further appreciate the beauty and majesty of Vancouver Island. We affectionately refer to our adventurous excursions as “Island Hopping.” specifically; our island hopping tours include exploring the Gulf Islands just off Vancouver Island’s East coast line.

Both of our daughters love to join us in our Island Hopping adventures along with our very special little dog named “Gizmo”. Most of our excursions are spontaneous last minute decisions – we like it that way. Planning ahead can have its benefits too, but it is not necessary to enjoy Island Hopping.

Our explorations to date have been simple day trips. We have found much can be accomplished in one day and we have ample time to enjoy ourselves. We always feel refreshed after our Island Hopping, and a sense of pride that we can experience a gratifying vacation so close to home and just a note - every island we have visited to date is on our list to re-visit one day and we hope to spend an evening of relaxing and absorbing in more detail.



Our most recent excursion (in May) was another one of those “Hey, the Coast is Clear, Lets go Island Hopping!” We quickly finished up our chores and tore into another Island Hopping experience and since it was closing in on noon, and time was limited, we decided on Gabriola Island as it was only a 30-40 minutes drive for us.

Gabriola Island is just a short 20 minute ferry ride leaving downtown Nanaimo (returning every hour) how convenient! As mentioned earlier our planning is always minimal and we’ve found that the B.C. Ferry terminals always have all the visitor travel brochures that you could want to plan your venture.



During our lovely 20 minute ferry ride we reviewed our information, planned our travel direction and started another fantastic day exploring one of the most spectacular Gulf Islands BC has to offer! The Ferry Terminal is close to the North end of the Island and just a few minutes drive. After disembarking we turned left on Taylor Bay Road which took us to the most northern part of the island and the end of the road at Orleban Point.

The terrain along the roads on Garbriola Island is mostly gentle rolling with a real nice mix of all the normal native trees you would expect to see and real nice open meadow area where we noticed farm animals grazing. We now know that Gabriola actually has quite a number of small productive farming operations unlike most other islands we’ve visited. Because we consider ourselves to be more “Country” than “Urban” we immediately experienced a very comfortable happy feeling which continued for the duration of our visit.

You can’t drive down every road (either gravel or paved) so we keep our exploring more to the obvious, following our most popular theme “If it has a good road going to it, it must be something worth checking out! The first such road was Decourcey Drive which takes you to Gabriola Sands Provincial Park, where we absolutely had to stop and go for a short hike. The park is actually a “narrows” with a spectacular beach on the North side and another beautiful one on the south side of the narrows.

Each beach is a short hike through a grassy meadow with the most beautiful majestic old fir tree, a perfect setting for a picnic. We noticed many families had the same idea. So many spectacular photo taking opportunities! We will not elaborate as we want you to experience that feeling of the “First Time Discovery”.

We continued North on the main road called Berry Point Road and arriving at the Clark Bay area we discovered a magnificent smooth rock beach on the rugged north coast of Gabriola, we just couldn’t resist! What an experience - gentle rolling solid rock beaches with some amazing rock out-croppings and very unique shapes. These have been created over thousands of years of ocean to shore contact. We noticed smaller smooth crevices with dozens of star fish attached to the walls and such an assortment of colors. In a feeble attempt to be discreet with a loud whisper, my wife, pointed in excitement to an otter lying on its back in the water having a snack just steps away from us. My daughter then pointed with equal excitement at a seal just 25 ft out from the beach checking us out! What an amazing experience, this beach is a must, if you plan on visiting this very special island!