Access via Beacon Ln off Marine Dr.
We kicked off our summer exploration with an old favorite. Everybody in West Vancouver knows and loves Lighthouse Park. As I grew up on the North Shore, my family would often take me and my brothers on walks through this huge park. It is by far the largest of all the parks, and it is stuffed full of trails and things to discover.
As a six-year old, my standard route through this park was in the main entrance, to the lighthouse viewpoint and back to the entrance. That also happens to be the most popular route among tourists visiting the park because of its easy trail and iconic view. This time, however, Nina and I chose to start at the side entrance. After a short walk along steep and narrow paths, we reached Juniper Point.
Once there, I heard a fellow hiker wondering aloud where that lighthouse the guidebook promised was. I directed her to the opposite side of the park before settling down to take in Juniper point's view of seal-covered rocks with Passage Island and Bowen Island in the background. Although the lighthouse is what the guide books tell you to look forward to, this park has much more that is worth seeing.
After leaving the point, we found a directional sign to a place called 'Songbird Meadow'. Unable to resist such a fairy tale name, we head off in that direction at a run, excited to do some frolicking. We burst out of the trees and found ourselves faced with an amphitheater. It wasn't anything near what we expected, but it was even better. The whole place felt old. It was like a piece of history in the middle of a forest. Looking around at remnants of a projector stand and the locks still in the hinges that the wooden screen covers had long since rotted out of, it was clear that movies were once actually played in this meadow. In such an empty place, it was strange to imagine all four rows of benches full of people. There was even grad year graffiti on the screen from 1966. This amphitheater had been out of use for several years before the mid 60's. And there we were... almost 50 years later, visiting the same quiet relic.
We explored as many of the park's trails as we could before that day's rain got too hard, and we even made it to the lighthouse. Since we made this trip before I got my new camera, here's a paint rendering of our visit to the lighthouse:
PPR
Good: views, trails, amphitheater
Bad: busy on nice days, too big if you're not up for a walk
9/10
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