Qualicum Beach half-day trip
Qualicum Beach (here’s a map) is great for a few hours by the water – and here the focus really is on the water because there aren’t playground or other park facilities. There is however, lots of great food all along this big stretch of highway. Just so you know, the highway is down to 50 km/hr, so cars aren’t speeding by. Still, watch the kids if you’re playing on the narrow grassy areas.
According to our eldest, there’s a great advantage to Qualicum Beach over Parksville – there are virtually no pieces of shells in the sand at Qualicum, so she could easily run around in bare feet and didn’t have to be so careful when digging the moat of her castle by hand.
Even better, though, were the geoducks (pronounced goo-ee-ducks), which are the world’s largest burrowing clams – there were hundreds just in the small area where we played. They live deep in the sand (for well over a century!) and feed through a siphon that sticks out through the surface. If you’re walking near one of these siphons, they retract, often shooting up tall streams of water, which produced squeals of delight from our youngest.
