A New Park to Love!
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Bonnechere Provincial Park
August 28 – 31, 2021
This was our first time at Bonnechere Provincial Park, but I’ve heard from a number of people that it’s a great park and they were all right! I wasn’t on the ON Parks website right at the 5 month mark, but was looking around, found a waterfront site in early May and grabbed it.
Since we booked for a Saturday start, we could have easily been at the campground right at 2 pm for check-in, but Josh and Syd were in town to move her into a new apartment. We spent the morning helping them move a few things, which put us a little behind in prepping for our departure. All of the food was ready and loaded, laundry done and the bed was made on Friday. All we had to do was hitch and pack our clothes on Saturday.
Moving always takes more time than anyone wants it to, so we only started to hitch up at 3 pm. We were on the road by 4:30 pm, but needed to stop for poop bags (Daisy) and gas. Just after turning off highway 17 to Bonnechere, we passed a long Airstream, flicked our lights and waved. If you have an Airstream, you’ll understand how exciting it is to spot another one in the wild!
On the Road
We finally pulled into the campground at around 7 pm and checked in. This is one of the parks that’s doing a pilot where printed permits aren’t needed. All we needed to do was check-in, either in-person or on the phone, when we arrived. Super easy.
We needed to dump our tank first and then made our way to our pretty site, right on the river. While there were no trees for a hammock, there was lots of sunshine for our solar panels to do their job. We managed to angle Holly so that our front door faced the water and the back window looked onto some trees, with a water view from the bed. The weather was fantastic! Our site was gorgeous, huge and quite flat. We didn’t have to do much to level at all. We had 2 picnic tables!
Such a pretty view from our site!
Daisy and I took a walk around while Chris unhitched. I spotted our friends with their three boys on a site close to ours and bumped into another family that I knew from my classes. Luckily, dinner was tacos that were already prepped and ready to go, as it was getting late. Delicious home-baked cookies from Josh and Syd finished off the meal. Our night ended with the movie Morning Glory starring Rachel McAdams.
While the temperature for sleep was pretty good, we still didn’t sleep well! First, we ran out of propane in the active tank and I woke up to the fridge clicking. I didn’t have the propane dial set to automatically switch to the full tank, so had to get up and do it myself. Then, Daisy got up and wanted to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so Chris took her out. She was up again at 7 am!
morning coffee and a book
Waiting for the sun to shine!
The view out our front door
I started reading the book Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter, which was quite good and I found it hard to put down! It kept me “busy” while Chris worked, especially since there was some rain and clouds all morning.
The weather began to clear up mid-day and the sun came out. Hooray! Chris went down to the beach with Daisy. We ended up getting a lot of sun to charge the batteries!
A flock of ducks came right up to our campsite and didn’t seem at all concerned that I was right there. It was really fun watching them and taking their photos. Lots of people were out canoeing, kayaking and SUPing on the river, going right past our site. It looked so fun and made me think that we need to figure out our water “toys”. There were also some people who launched their inner tubes right from their waterfront sites and were out floating on the water. The water was so calm on this little river.
I took another walk around the campground and ended up at the beach. It’s so pretty! And huge. The water is shallow for quite a ways out, so it never felt crowded. We returned to the beach later on with Daisy and took turns swimming. The water was the exact right temperature. Daisy had a huge fit when Chris left to go for a swim! It was hard to calm her down, but I finally did. Lesson learned, it would have been MUCH easier if I’d had treats with me.
Gorgeous beach!
We returned to our site and Chris went back to working, while I read. We had some appetizers and split a Corona (yes, we’re lightweights!). I love a cold beer in the summer, but a whole can is always makes me feel too full, so it’s great to be able to share.
Our neighbours caught some fish during the day and cooked it over their fire. They kindly brought us a few bites to try. It was BEYOND amazing!
The weather was warm, but there was a bit of a breeze every so often. I find that the likelihood of a breeze is much higher when you’re near the water. Chris took Daisy for a walk and then went back to the beach for another dip to rinse off. We ate dinner late - I only started it at 7:45 pm. We had yummy chicken and veggies on the bbq. Chris was chopping veggies as we heard the thunder start, so I rushed to get them on the BBQ. As things were cooking, I cleaned up outside and put everything away in the car or in Holly so nothing would get wet. I had literally walked into Holly with the food and the rain started! Good timing!
Even with the awning out, the rain was coming in a bit, so we closed the door. The thunder and lightning continued for the rest of the evening (until just past midnight?) and we had quite a show with tons of lightning. It really poured for a bit and then turned into a steady rain.
We ate dinner while watching Manifest and then put on a movie that was quite forgettable. Chris was quick to fall asleep since he was so tired, but I stayed up reading until 1 am! The curse of a book you can’t put down!
Dinner inside as the skies opened up.
It was nearly 8:30 am when we finally woke up, which felt so good. Chris took Daisy for a walk while I made the coffee.
Leftovers from all the rain the night before!
The service was very spotty at our campsite, so Chris went down to the beach to work where there’s much better service. If you’ve got to work, it’s a pretty nice beach to work from!
I finished my book, had some nectarines (so fresh and delicious!) and then took Daisy to the beach to meet Chris and do some of my own work. We talked to Josh for a few minutes as well - he was heading back to school for his last semester in Sudbury. It was a busy morning! We headed back to our site at around 1 pm so that Chris could go for a run. I ate lunch instead.
We got to walk past this view every time we went to the beach!
Daisy and I took a hike along the Footprints in Time trail towards the Sandy Flats Campground. We walked around that campground and then took the walking path back to the River Loop Campground, where we were staying. It was a pretty hot and muggy walk and while I would have gone longer, Daisy wasn’t keen - she was pretty hot! We were out for less than an hour. Next time, I’d like to do the longer Footprints in Time hike.
We went back to the beach to work a bit more… Such a great “office”!
We had another late dinner, watched a show and went to bed. We got up the next morning and had a slow start with coffee. We took Daisy for a walk back to the beach - it’s so beautiful there! And then we had breakfast at our campsite.
Chris still had some work to do, so I puttered around packing up and then we hitched up and headed home just before check out.
Ottawa - Bonnechere Provincial Park - Ottawa
Towing: 369 km
Driving: 0 km
Black Tank: We didn’t record this
Fresh water: We didn’t record this
Batteries: One good thing was that we had sunshine every day, so the solar kept our batteries charged nicely (a welcome change from the very cloudy days we had the week before, where it was hot and we needed to use the fantastic fan every night, even though our batteries weren't getting charged via solar!). We also bought a Jackery charger that worked very well to charge all of our electronics each day (Chris was still working for two of the days). The Jackery charged his laptop once and then 2 phones, 2 watches, and iPad every day and a fan and kobo once each, without us needing to charge it in the car. Success!
Other: I wanted to read at night and the overhead light is SO jarring. We have a Fat Boy lamp that’s the right level of light, but nowhere to place it! Our friends suggested using the gel film in the lights, so we’ll try that! We still need to work on our fan solutions…
