Exploring Neck Point Park in Nanaimo

 by Keith and Heather Nicol

On Friday, March 27 we decided to check out some new trails in Nanaimo before dropping our daughter off at the ferry to return to Vancouver . Our first stop was Neck Point Park which seemed to have lots of easy trails criss crossing the park and some very scenic shoreline with beaches and even some off shore islands. What we didn't expect was the large number of sea lions that were there as well. We started out walking counter clockwise around the coastal trail from the medium size parking lot. The gravel trail is wide and well marked with several lookouts along the way. There are stair cases in places and as we made our way along the coast we could see several people on a rocky island. 

 The rocky island is connected to the mainland by a narrow gravel spit and once there we could see what all the interest was. All around the waters edge were sea lions either in the water or hauled out on the rocks. There were dozens of barking sea lions and was fascinating watching them diving into the water and "posing" on the rocks with their necks and heads stuck up in the air. After taking many pictures we decided to cut our hike along the coast short since we were getting hungry and headed back to the car to get our lunch. There are several picnic tables near the car park in the sun and they made a perfect spot for a picnic snack. We vowed to come back to check out the other trails in this scenic park on another visit and we wondered it had taken so long to explore this Nanaimo gem.  

 If you go- We used google maps and used the Morningside Drive access to get to the Neck Point Park parking lot. We happened to get the last spot since it was obvious that this is a popular park - particularly now with the sea lions close at hand. If you find the parking lot full - the nearby school might have parking spots available. We downloaded the full walking route on AllTrails which was useful. The tide was 3.4 meters which we were there.At higher tides the island with the sea lions is not accessible.