This afternoon after finishing up most of a work day, we headed by bike back into downtown Nanaimo and took the little ferry over to Newcastle Island. That's Newcastle on the left, and Protection Island on the right.
Newcastle Island is a marine provincial park just across the harbor, and has 22km of hiking and biking trails, a pavillion with a snack bar, and a tent campground. You can bring your camping gear over on the ferry and use one of their wheeled carts to tow it over to the campground. Pretty sweet! Here's the ferry we took on the way over:
The ferry ride costs $9 Canadian per adult round trip, and the bikes are an extra buck.
Here are the bikes bungeed to the upper deck:
The Newcastle Island ferry landing:
Looking back across the harbor to Nanaimo:
From the Newcastle Island website, this'll give you a bit more info about the island:
A significant place utilized by the Snuneymuxw people for thousands of years and traditionally known as Saysutshun, Newcastle Island is a wondrous escape from the bustling urban center of Nanaimo just across the harbour. Alongside the strong First Nations presence and culture on the island, it is also home to many rich histories which include coal mining, a sandstone quarry, and herring salteries, all of which make Newcastle Island a must-see eco-tourism destination for those visiting Nanaimo.
There was a sailboat regatta happening out past the island:
The bike path is much more of a mountain bike style path than a road bike style path, but our bikes handled it just fine:
This is Mallard Lake, in the middle of the island:
Bike Fridays are such great travel bikes!!
Back to the ferry landing:
This is the cute little tiny ferry we took back across the harbor, with 5 bikes and 12 passengers!!
And here are some of the bikes strapped onto the port side and stern, for scale:
Here's a map of our route from the campground and back:
We're doing laundry now and grilling some tuna for fish tacos. I think we're going to do a little day trip up to Courtenay tomorrow. There's an annual (annual! not weekly!) (the 44th annual) Saturday market going on that sounds interesting. Then on Sunday we'll head over to Tofino! We're having a blast up here.
