Gordon Bay Provincial Park — Attraction in Area F (Cowichan Lake South / Skutz Falls)

This is THE iconic family campground that one makes memories that last a lifetime. We've been coming to Gordon Bay Provincial Park for over 30 years with our kids, our friends and ourselves, and the good memories just keep stacking up!

By far, the best campsite is the group campsite as it not only has hot and cold running water at the sinks in the shelter, but on rainy days when fires are allowed you have under-cover wood stoves for heat and electrical outlets for charging, kettles, griddles etc... It's the closest campsite to the beach. And you have all of your friends in one place... There is a downside: most of the area is tent camping with only a couple spots to park RVs or trailers.

We've made so many memories here with our kids growing up together, and lifelong friends with the parents who brought their kids. We've windsurfed, waterskied, snorkeled, swung off the rope swings further along and across the lake, and generally just relaxed and enjoyed the marginal cell service over the years.

Not to say we haven't had our bad experiences: vandalism to our cars, buses burning in the parking lot and kids having epileptic fits requiring ambulances... But this place fosters great memories of life with one's family and friends, and life will have laughter and tears combined. Gordon Bay filled our albums with those memories and I hope it will for many, many more years.

June 2024: Just returned from another great camping trip. Some things have changed which need a comment or two:

The iconic log boom that ran across the bay of the beach is now gone--it broke apart during the winter storms and blew up onto the beach. While we were there, loggers finally arrived to buck up and remove the logs, and supposedly there's a modern floating boom on its way. In the interim I saw two boaters come into the swimming area causing consternation on the part of campers/swimmers/kids/parents/staff... This needs to be addressed immediately before someone gets hurt!!

This is just a small example of the underlying management of this facility. Most of the staff onsite are friendly and helpful, but there are many examples of how the management of the park is more concerned with making money than making memories for families. Bathroom facilities that are half finished, there's the cheapest toilet paper ever made, the bathrooms have broken windows, the propane heaters never warm up the building and the showers that don't work properly.

Garbage overflowed in containers, and the beaches weren't cleaned overnight.

We still had a great time camping. But it's getting harder to book a campsite and it's costing more money every year to camp. One would expect the experience to get better under those terms, but it actually feels like the campground is slowly rotting away without any of the money being used for...

The campground itself Is great but k2parks management if a joke!!!

We get there as we normally can pay with debit or credit and with covid we don't carry much cash around. When the female park attendant comes by to collect payment she was quite rude about how they only rake cash. She said there pos machine was stolen weeks ago.... I hope everyone who had paid by debitb9rncredit is the last couple of weeks was advised that there would have been a breach of privacy.against them.

Why would it take so long to get a new pos machine??they have not cleaned the bathrooms in a day and a half now and i have taken photos with time stamps as proof.

People are operating generators at midnight and they have not patrolled since 5:45pm.

Seriously, parks canada should fire this company!!!

I would give the park a five star but these a holes drag it right...

This is a lovely, well maintained park. The campsites are covered with sharp crushed gravel, which is less than ideal for tent campers like us. There is a fun playground and an bike track for the kids, who all seemed to be having the time of their lives riding bikes and swimming in the beautiful clear lake. I wish they had a kayak rental available on the lake because we didn't have room to bring ours. We were having a great time until they sprayed something intolerably smelly all over road and we had to flee for the day. It really is gag inducing. We were told by the park staff that all Provincial parks in BC spray with paper plant waste once a year to control dust. It was our terrible luck to be there when...