Heard the news? Summer beaches are back.

Must be time for a sea cruise, or at least a jaunt out to the aptly named Sea Island, where two of the most serene strands on the Vancouver beach scene—and one of the most accessible regional parks—anchor the airport.

YVR has a beach? Not exactly. Although the airport authority is the island’s major landowner, Metro Vancouver’s Iona Beach Regional Park, as well as the City of Richmond’s McDonald Beach Park, are nearby places to head if letting your hair down and listening to a friendly breeze are on the playlist.

No matter how you roll, there’s a special beach in each guaranteed to suit whatever you have in mind, including campfires and an off-leash-dog area in McDonald. (Because of wildlife concerns, dogs are not allowed in most of Iona; leashes are required everywhere else except one jetty trail.)

Rivalling the string of beaches that lines English Bay from Jericho to Spanish Banks, a wide swath of fine silt spreads along the shore of the Fraser River’s North Arm. Here, the river channels past McDonald Beach and then Iona Beach’s North Arm Jetty before emptying into the Pacific at the end of an epic 1,375-kilometre run from headwaters on the B.C.–Alberta border near Jasper.

That’s just for starters: sand and driftwood define the shoreline of a shallow, saltwater intertidal basin contained within Iona Beach Park’s two jetties, which fork out in a V shape into the Strait of Georgia.

For those who enjoy exploring on wheels of whatever design—strollers, bikes, wheelchairs—four-kilometre-long Iona Jetty, a cement outfall pipe installed in the 1980s, stretches so far out into Roberts Bank as to seemingly float in an ocean realm of its own. The pipe sports a wide, smooth-surfaced top as well as a narrower unpaved service road that parallels the southern wall.

During the day, a stiff onshore breeze rakes the elevated approach, one that offers a liftoff as suitable to kite flyers as to the jumbo jets streaking skyward from nearby runways. Year-round, cool ocean temperatures in the strait add a cutting edge to the wind. Pack a tuque to give your ears relief, particularly at the end of the jetty, where the sensation of standing on a ship’s prow prevails as swells slap the pipe.

Thankfully, two strategically placed shelters, as well as a viewpoint with washrooms at the tip, afford refuge without sacrificing panoramic skyscape views. Near sunset, when the air grows still, this is hands down the best place to stargaze within easy reach of downtown. Therein lies Sea Island’s appeal for cyclists since the construction of the Canada Line. Hop off at Templeton Station and ride along nearby Ferguson Road, where the air is scented by wild roses mingled with the occasional whiff of wastewater from the Greater Vancouver sewage plant. “Eeew,” you say? No worries. The organic fragrance evaporates at Iona Beach’s gates, where the action sits upwind from the facility’s treatment ponds.

When the McDonald family homesteaded on Sea Island in the 1850s, Iona sat apart, an island unto itself. By the 1950s, a narrow causeway linked the two. The resultant slough—with its dense backwater marsh coupled with surrounding sand dunes—offered critical habitat for more than 300 species of migratory birds that throng the Pacific flyway.

Summer may be a quiet time at Iona, but there is still plenty of wildlife in residence. Great blue herons stalk Sea Island’s western corner, where a tidal flat spreads toward YVR’s third runway, the parade ground for long-haul aircraft. Bring binoculars and sweep your gaze across the tops of cattails that front a boardwalk and viewing platform above Iona Beach’s South Marsh. Sweet trills from the likes of cedar waxwings and redwing blackbirds lyrically infuse the breeze.

There’s much more to Iona Beach than first meets the eye. Initially, the outfall-pipe jetty, the marsh trails, and a foreshore beach with picnic tables that front a gull-winged washroom facility beckon. But wait. The best beaches are set apart, hidden along the low-slung North Arm Jetty’s south-facing shoreline, where salvaged logs are stacked in the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s fibre-recovery industrial zone. Welcome to driftwood-fort heaven. Given that the four-kilometre-long beach is composed of fine sand, the going underfoot requires a more robust effort to walk than your previous gentle roll along the outfall jetty.

Here’s a suggestion: stake out a spot on the beach that offers something for everyone in the way of comfort and shelter—a log wide enough to double as both a backrest and a picnic table, for example—then train your sights on a mission to Point No Point at the jetty’s tip, which sits across the North Arm from the slopes of Pacific Spirit Regional Park at Point Grey. Budget an hour to reach a channel marker where the beach narrows and fades away in harmony with the Fraser’s last breath.

Here is a world of its own. What’s playing on the breeze? Endless summer tunes, of course.

Access: Iona Beach Regional Park lies 15 kilometres south of Vancouver on Sea Island in Richmond. Cross the Arthur Laing Bridge at the south end of Granville Street onto Grant McConachie Way. Turn right onto Templeton Street North and follow it across Sea Island past McDonald Beach Park to Iona Beach. Cyclists can approach Sea and Iona islands via the Templeton SkyTrain station on the Canada Line. For more information, see the Metro Vancouver website.