Close to the Vancouver Islands University in Nanaimo, BC is the Westwood Lake Park. It offers places to camp and a 5.5 kilometers trail around the lake.
The park is a nice place to stay for a while or just walk around. The trail which surrounds the lake goes through a forest area. Some places allow to take shortcuts or longer paths with even more untouched nature. I enjoyed the quiet atmosphere in what seemed like an adventure route.
Also interesting was the the amount of logs in the water near the shore. A lot of places had next to a hundred cut trees lying on the water’s surface. This seems to be a common way to store tree logs. Around the southern coast of Nanaimo are tons of logs floating on the sea waiting to be processed. At some places the remainders of tall trees were still standing in the lake. They didn’t have any branches which gave an alien look to them.
Close before one finishes the trail the most beautiful view of the park can be glanced at. Atop of a big stone platform one can see the Mt. Benson Regional Park when looking towards the lake. On the day of my visit clouds moved through the foothills of Mt. Benson. It was an impressive scenery.
Click here for a photo sphere I took on stone platform.