Urban Beach Picnic

With the last few weekends of August approaching and Barb and I beginning to focus more and more on our upcoming travels in September, we decide to take advantage of the great summer weather and get out somewhere for a relaxing picnic for the day. This all ended up happening on the last Saturday which was the last weekend of August and our picnic day took place at Belcarra Park. Located in the village of Belcarra and just around the corner of Burrard Inlet from Port Moody, Belcarra Park is a 30 minute drive from Vancouver and takes you along a spectacularly beautiful drive through the dense forested area of Belcarra Regional Park. The drive out to Belcarra Park alone is worth half the trip. If you ever have an opportunity to take this drive in an open convertible car, do it as the scenery is quite something.

At the end of the drive through the forest you end up in the parking lot of Belcarra Park which is situated right at the mouth of Indian Arm across the water from the eastern side of North Vancouver known as Deep Cove.

Belcarra Park has a large open area in the middle for all kinds of activities like volleyball and such and several large covered areas for groups to have barbeques. During the summer time these sections are usually reserved well in advance for large family or company events. However, our desire was to be closer to the water and we found a nice shady spot under some trees to spread our blankets with a an unrestricted view of the inlet.

Belcarra Park, being right up against the water, has several activities going on all at once. There is a long pier stretching out where there are usually dozens of people there who have crab traps in the water and can be seen pulling a crab out of the water every so often. Out in the water there were at least 10 boats going by at any time as Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm are all popular places for people to boat during the summer. But perhaps most of all, the vast majority of people at Belcarra Park were people like ourselves who were there with some food and drinks and were just relaxing in a small shady spot for the day or taking some time to explore the interesting shoreline for undiscovered treasures.

Baden