Day Trip to Bowen Island

On Monday we decided to do some ferry hopping. So we headed out to West Vancouver and hopped on the Bowen Island Ferry. Now, I'm a big fan of findfamilyfun.com - it's where I get a lot of my ideas from, or where I'll make sure that my ideas are kid friendly. They said that you could easily walk on the ferry and spend a day just walking around Snug Harbour. So that's exactly what we did.

Here we are waiting for our ferry to leave Horseshoe Bay.


The big ferry to Nanaimo got to leave first so then we chased it out of the harbour.

When we arrived in Snug Cove (it's a very short ferry ride!) I asked David to pose for a picture by the fence. "Look like a teenager," I said. And he did a very convincing impression of one ;)

This is the library. Most of the buildings in Snug Cove are from the days when the Steamship Company was here. They had several hundred cottages and would ferry people over by Steamship for holidays. The hey days were from the 20s to the 40s and it sounds like it was a lot of fun. And these days it makes for some awesome scenery what with all the nice buildings. A few of the cottages still exist and can be rented in a local orchard.

This is a sort of touristyshop/general store. Complete with bearded old sailor type smoking on the front porch!

Oh, and this dog that David befriended.


Andrew made friends with a fish (can you see him in the shadows?)

The computer repair store.

And a coffee roaster. Next time we'll skip this place and walk to the end of the block where the bakery is. The service at this place was awful, they were out of everything, the place needed a good scrubbing AND the coffee was too watery. But the smells from the bakery were what tricked us into going into this place.

Still, it wasn't a complete washout, my muffin was very good!

Andrew's scone was pretty, but apparently not tasty.



This building housed the credit union, but it also had advertising for a local development company. We walked up to Artisan Square later and saw some of their houses. They all have these gorgeous wood framed windows and I loved the rounded windows on this particular building. Hard to believe it's actually a rectangular concrete building with this for a facade. Gorgeous!


We did lots of walking. After walking from the docks up the hill looking for breakfast, we walked back down to the dock and into the forest. From there we found the trail to the bridge. At the Tourist centre they told us to go this way because the kids would like crossing the bridge. Ocean on one side, lagoon on the other.

It took us a while because though we had a map, everything on the map was marked, the trails in real life weren't. But that looks like the place we're looking for!


Ah yes, here's the bridge.


Just past this gorgeous fence the trail wound up to a residential area. We followed the road to Bridal Veil Falls. I was expecting something along the lines of Bridal Falls in Rosedale or Shannon Falls in Squamish.

I didn't bother taking any pictures. But it was a nice spot to let David climb and jump while we had some water and enjoyed the shade. Then we took the trail through the forest and back to the main street. By this time, we were hungry for lunch.

Too bad this place was closed. We went to Doc Morgans overlooking the harbour and had fish and chips instead.

Then, again on the advice of the lady in the tourist centre, we walked up a 300 m trail to Artisan Square. The trail is almost all straight up and has lots of stairs. But it's also through the trees and there are some good views. We got to the square - it was really pretty - and looked around.


The kids had some gelato (their reward for all the walking!) and then we booted it down to the harbour to catch the four o'clock ferry.



I think next time we might bring our car. Apparently there is an amazing beach on the far side of the island. I'd love to check out some of the developments too.