Saturday to Monday, July 27 to 29, 2019 (Qualicum First Nations Campground, Qualicum Bay, BC)

Saturday was a very relaxing day...after exercises, showers and breakfast, it was pretty much a day of sitting outside. I was knitting and Steve reading. Not much to report on...

We woke to another beautiful sunny day Sunday (July 28). After our usual start to the day, we sat outside in the sunshine...Steve reading and I had my knitting. A nice relaxing morning.

Late morning we drove the short distance to Bowser to pick up a few things needed for dinner tonight....Don and Rhonda (my brother and sister-in-law) are coming over. On the way home, we stopped at Cone Zone for ice cream.

This was parked in the lot...
 Enjoying our ice cream...
 ...as we sit with a view of the ocean...
Don and Rhonda arrived just before 4:30. We sat chatting...
 And then enjoyed the evening by having dinner outside...
 Followed by a campfire...
 My bro and I...
We had a great time and a wonderful visit with them. Great seeing you again!

Another beautiful day Monday (July 29)...sunny with a light breeze, perfect weather! It is pack up day today. After breakfast, Steve went out to get started...after I did what I could inside, I went out to give him a hand but really didn't do much...basically sitting with my knitting.

Steve blowing the pine needles off the roof and toppers...
Our neighbours left this afternoon, leaving us with a view of the ocean again...so we enjoyed our last happy hour taking in the view.

It was a very fast month! Although we enjoyed it here, if we were to return, it would be for a much shorter time...likely no more than a week. It was a great place for our family gathering...that's something we will certainly cherish.

It's a beautiful campground with lots of potential and the staff were great to deal with, but we found there were a few negatives. With the campground left in it's natural state many of the sites are unlevel, some extremely so. The bathrooms were disgusting and the cleanliness didn't improve much until our 4th week, especially the men's. We never did see anyone inspecting and cleaning sites after campers left or picking up garbage laying and blowing around. The office hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. On three different occasions it wasn't opened until late morning or mid afternoon. Campers would be lined up at the door waiting to check in, buy shower tokens etc. I guess if you don't feel like working just don't show up, and they don't have a backup plan! There didn't appear to be anyone on site overnight for security, although the gate into the campground is locked from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Maybe we're too critical but after working two seasons in provincial campgrounds, we know what we liked to experience as campers. Every site cleaned, bathrooms and/or pit toilets cleaned several times throughout the day. We always had a bucket and a picker with us for garbage as we made our rounds.
We met many people that have been coming here for years and love it, forgiving the negatives, and the online reviews are mostly positive :)

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