Samuel du Champlain Provincial Park

Night 1 - Ontario

July 30-31, 2022

After SO. MUCH. PLANNING, the time finally came to head out on our big trip across Canada! We planned this trip for my 50th Birthday in August 2020, but then covid had other plans and we amended that trip to travel in Nothern Ontario instead. Also an amazing trip, just not quite as far.

We pushed off out of our driveway a little later than we hoped, but I also knew we would likely only be ready to leave later in the afternoon. Arriving an hour earlier than we did would have been great, but there was literally no traffic on the highway (late Saturday afternoon of a long weekend meant everyone was likely already camping!). After a long day of preparing and wrapping things up at home/work, Chris was a bit tired, so we started listening to the YouTube interviews that Oprah did with Eckhart Tolle about his book “The New Earth”.

Since discovering Deep River, we now always stop at the waterfront for a short dog walk along the river. And, as always, Daisy had a blast playing in the water and getting very wet. I stayed at the car to use the bathroom and have a snack.

Finally, just before 9 pm, we arrived at the campground to find site 118 that we had reserved, was a beautiful waterfront site, right on the water with access from our site. The entry was a bit rocky, but not terrible (and the reason for water shoes!). It was so easy to take a dip in the water, which we did after our hike on Sunday.

We quickly set up, watched the sunset and took Daisy for a walk as the dusk settled in.

Our section of the campground had a lot of tents, some tent trailers and a few trailers, nothing really big (we were right across from an Avion though, which was pretty long).

We had chicken sandwiches for supper (always need something easy on the first night!) and watched Parks and Rec (sadly, it’s leaving Netflix!). We’re only finishing season 3.

We went to bed at around 11 pm. I think we were all pretty tired! I woke up around 1 am and then around 3 am. I guess I was also a bit excited! The temperature dropped over night, so sleeping was beautiful. We kept the window open and the fan on low. We woke up to fog on the water. It was so pretty.

Daisy woke us up at around 6:30 am, so we reluctantly got out of bed and all went for a walk. We walked as far as the bridge and then turned around. We also saw the sign for the Kag trail and decided we’d go back to Holly, have some coffee and breakfast and then go back for a hike. On our walk we saw a few deer run/hop across the road right in front of us. So cool!

We made some coffee and breakfast, enjoying the fantastic view and great weather from our site.

By the time we headed out for our hike at around 10:30 am, it was warming up. The Kag Trail was rated as difficult and was nearly 2.5 km of up and down. Like a lot of up and down. Over rocks and roots and a little bit of steep up and steep down. It took us about 50 min to complete, but that included an extra few minutes of Chris having to back track to look for my dropped lens cap. Oops. It was a pretty trail, with a view of the water in a few places and about halfway, there was a spot where we could go down to the water (Daisy was able to have a drink of water, but it wasn’t really somewhere to swim or anything like that).