To round out our 3-stop tour of Central Vancouver Island, we made a final stop at Miracle Beach Provincial Park. It’s set on a beautiful stretch of pebbly and sandy beach between Campbell River and Courtney/Comox, and it’s very popular.

For a large campground with 202 campsites, the shower facilities are strikingly sparse. Until recently, there was only one (!?) shower house at the centre of the whole campground. They added two more shower houses at either end of the campground near site 85 and 100, but each only had 2 rooms. We waited for 30 minutes to use one of these rooms.

Besides the abysmal shower-to-campsite ratio, camping here was a treat. Like most other campground on the west coast, it’s set in a beautiful second growth forest. There’s a small playground here as well. There were park-led children’s activities throughout the week, and a nature house that rivals a small museum.

The provincial campfire ban finally lifted after a full week of rain. We burned through 3 bundles of firewood.

But what set this park apart was the namesake Miracle Beach.

With a short 300m walk from the campground gatehouse, it’s easy to get to the beautiful beach, with views across the Straight of Georgia at the Coast Mountains on the Mainland. A pleasant day-use area stretches along the beach with a row of picnic tables and a washroom.

After breakfast, we spent the entire day at the beach. First, we went for a beach exploration at low tide, finding many sand-dollars, shore crabs, and even a newly-molted soft shell dungeness crab. The sandy beach was covered in small holes that most likely lead to an abundance of clams. Collecting any animal is prohibited in the provincial park though, so no clamming is allowed.

Then we had an amazing picnic lunch with full views of the ocean, and a hammock to boot. The views of this picnic were hard to beat. Even cooking and eating at an ocean front campsite at Porteau Cove may not have awarded us with this kind of expansive views due to foliage cover. The only picnic in recent memory with a better view would be our dinner at the observation tower on Orcas Island.

In the afternoon, we joined the Jerry’s Rangers activities led by a Park Ambassador and checked out the nature house afterwards.

We returned to the beach to rejoin Grandpa for an ocean front dinner, before packing up and returning to camp. It was surely a wonderful way to conclude our epic 2-week camping adventure.