Parksville Kite Festival 2009

What did we do on a beautiful sunny day here in southern portion of British Columbia on a weekend? We headed over to Parksville for their annual Kite Festival. Though for us there was a bit of a twist, we went without the car!

One of Robyn’s favorite activities is kite flying and we did enjoy the 32nd Annual Pacific Rim Kite Festival over in Vanier Park a little while ago. While there Robyn learned that Parksville also has a large festival and it was going to happen in July. We marked the day on the calendar and made plans to go for the day.

Parksville is a small ocean-side town located about 20 minutes North of Naniamo. Since we did not take the car we walked onto one of the early sailings for the BC Ferries. We did a reservation for 2 seats on the Tofino Bus which would takes us into Parksville on its way to Tofino. The cost of that for each of us was roughly $13 one way. We noticed we did not have many choices for buses back to Naniamo’s Departure Bay, but we didn’t let that bother us while in Parksville. One thing that bugged me about the bus ride into Parksville was the poor etiquette a couple of older ladies had. They were clearly friends as they chit-chatted back and forth, but they would not sit together as they both wanted window seats. This lead to Robyn and myself to sit apart. We were glad it was only a 20-30 minute bus ride.

Once we arrived in Parksville (the bus depot is a bit further south than their downtown core) we asked the lady at the depot about ways of getting home. If we took the Greyhound or other coach type bus, we would only have two time options; 1PM and 5:50PM. Either too soon for us, or too late for us. The lady was nice enough to suggest take local transit. It seems that BCTransit has an Intercity Connector line that connects Qualicum, Parksville and Naniamo with regular scheduled pickups.  The cool thing about it was that it would only cost us $2.25 to get back to Naniamo!

We also met up with friends of ours Meghan and Mike from Victoria. They took the train up to come out and see the Kite Festival too.

Parksville Annual Kite Festival

The whole reason why we went to Parksville for the day; the Kite Festival. The Kite Festival is put on by the various kite flier organizations such as the BCKA. Kite flying demonstrations happen for 2 days as well as various other activities, those that are geared towards hobbyist kite-fliers and children.

Many people came to not only fly their own kites, but also to watching other people fly their kites and to socialize among other kite lovers.

I would think one of the cool and most interesting aspects of attending these free festivals are the Fighting Kite demonstrations. It’s just amazing watching multiple people fly their kites in synchronization without incidents, such as collisions!

If you forgot to bring your kite or don’t have a kite, not to worry! They sell various kites at these events that range from various levels of experience. You can also have your children make their own kites (free) and they will spend hours running around trying to keep their creation up in the air.

What is the really cool part (in my opinion) about Parksville? It would defintily be the community beach. When the tide is low, the beach goes out quite far too! Similar to that of Spanish Banks here in Vancouver. The area has a lot to offer families with children too; spray park, concession stand, grassy areas and more. You can easily spend all day here in Parksville at the beach. When it gets to hot out in the sun, just walk out into the ocean and go for a cool swim! You can actually walk out pretty far before you have to start swimming too.

The entire day was great even it was fairly long. It also did not cost very much to head over to and from Parksville either. About $50 for ferry ride there and back for the both of us (it would have easily been over $200 with the car), $27 for the TofinoBus to Parksville, and then $5 to get from Parksville back to Naniamo’s Departure Bay ferry terminal. Just add in some food and voila! A fairly inexpensive way to enjoy a great, beautiful day over on Vancouver Island! Did I mention that the BCTransit route at most took 40 minutes? Not bad for $2.25 each!

As per usual you can click on the photos above to view a larger size without leaving this page!

You can also visit my Flickr Photoset from this trip as well: Parksville Kite Festival 2009 in Photos.

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