Close to Home at Murphy's Point
/Murphy’s Point Provincial Park
June 7 - 9, 2019
I didn’t mean to book camping two weekends in a row (rookie mistake?), but by the time I thought about doing something about it, there were no good sites left for the weekend I really wanted to go. So we camped two weekends in a row. And it was actually great! We were only home for 4 days, so we plugged in and left our fridge running for the week so that we wouldn’t have to move a bunch of little things into the house. We also left our sheets on the bed for one more weekend and most of our toiletries in the trailer for the week. These little things made prep to get out SO easy! I still didn’t find the time to change the back storage lock, so once again, we used our car. A little inconvenient, but not terrible.
We also prepared our meals better for this trip. I precooked a few things to make cooking for the weekend easy (left over bacon and grilled chicken). This isn’t something I would do on a regular basis, I’m only prepared if I cook during the week and there are leftovers (a hard thing with a 19 year old boy at home from University for the summer!).
I always have a list of things I’d LIKE to get done before leaving and notoriously, many of the items don’t make the cut. This time it was seeding the lawn. Oh well, we can always try to get it done when we come back. We were able to get on the road by about 4:30 pm (after picking up our coffee first!). The traffic getting out of the city wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be, so we arrived at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park just before 7 pm with daylight to spare!
Thankfully, the week was warm and the bugs weren’t quite as bad when we arrived. We checked in quickly and easily and headed to our site. There are lots of sites in the Hogg’s Bay section that require some creative levelling, but ours only required a little bit of levelling. We did use up all of our levelling blocks (and decided we need to get another set before our next trip!) and realized that we’ve been quite lucky with level sites in the past (it doesn’t hurt that when I book the site, I tend to look for the description “level” or “mostly level”:) We remembered the long extension cord this time and were able to plug in. It was only 15 amps, but the weather was looking cool at night and we love our fantastic fan (and will choose it over the noisy A/C as much as we can!).
The orange light reflecting from our neighbour!
This is our third trip to Murphy’s Point and this time we were on site 65. It’s got a great view of the water peeking through the trees, it’s just across from the dock and right near the beach. A great spot, if you like lots of action. It wasn’t very private and we had a trailer in the site right behind us. We pulled up as close to the front of the site as we could, but they had an orange light that they left on all night and we had to keep our bedroom curtains closed tightly as it shone right into our eyes when we were in bed. But, it was fun to watch people pass by. When our front window isn’t open, the light reflects off of it and you can’t really see if anyone is in the trailer. So, we enjoyed watching people slow down and point at our little cutie. And then Daisy would bark and they’d continue on their way! I expect we’ll camp here again, so next time we’ll try for a site a little further up the hill where there aren’t any sites directly behind us.
Our view out the front window
We left with dinner partially prepared, so we actually took some time to finish cooking dinner that we brought from home. Afterwards we took Daisy for a short walk. One of the downsides of this park are the TICKS! We didn’t see any ticks last summer or fall when we were here and weren’t prepared for them. Even though we mostly kept her on the main road, she still managed to pick up a number of them in her fur. She sleeps on our bed, so this was a bit of a concern for us! We weren’t keen on finding ticks in our bed… Chris suggested that we just head back home, but in the end, we decided that we would just need to be judicious and do a full check every time we let Daisy go outside. This was our first exposure to ticks, and we’ve heard so many terrible things about lyme disease, so neither of us slept well that first night. We weren’t overly concerned about Daisy - she’s on tick prevention medication - but we’re not! During the weekend, we probably removed about 18-20 ticks from her. We had a good weekend, but this certainly weighed on our minds and we weren’t as relaxed as we normally are.
Daisy was up often during our first night. Chris finally got up and took her out for a quick walk and I think I had the best hour of sleep between 7 and 8 am when they were gone! We had coffee and breakfast (scrambled eggs with bacon, cheese, mushrooms, spinach and tomatoes - delicious!). We decided on our last trip that we didn’t like our toaster situation, so this time we brought a plug in toaster with us and it makes a huge difference! The weather was perfect and we were finally able to have a meal outside.
Our site was right across from the beach access as well as the dock. Daisy’s not allowed on the beach, but the dock is fair game, so we headed there after breakfast. It’s amazing how much the view can change when you move 10 feet “into” the water! It was so beautiful sitting on the dock for a few minutes… until some of the black flies (or deer/horse flies?) came around:)
view from the dock!
Murphy’s Point has a few good hikes and despite the worry of ticks, we decided to head out for a hike and just try to keep Daisy on the trail to avoid bringing back any ticks. We tried the Pointe Trail - the info said it was 5.5 km, but our GPS said it was not quite 5 km. The trees kept the temperature down a bit, kept us out of the sun and the bugs only “bugged” us when we stopped (so we just kept going!). There was a pretty view about halfway along the trail and we stopped briefly to take it in. There was also a small beach where it’s easy to canoe or kayak from (as well as a small island not far away). It was fairly quiet with only a few other people at the beach. Daisy loved being able to drink the lake water from the beach and walked in a little bit. She’s not a huge fan of the water, except for drinking purposes. It was a relatively easy hike and we enjoyed it.
the water was so high!
At a lookout on the Point Trail
on the point trail
We had some lunch, finished the movie we started the night before (Brooklyn) and then decided to head out to the Perth Brewery for a flight of beer (we split it:) Yummy. And they’re dog friendly! We met a few others with their dogs as well.
I brought homemade hamburgers for dinner, so we picked up some firewood on the way back to our site and I set out to build our fire. The wood was excellent. It was all really dry and there were a few smaller pieces that, along with some newspaper, made it easy to get the fire started. We have our own small grill that we add to the fire pit to grill on, since the ones that are there are kind of icky and the rungs are far apart (I’d lose a burger between them easily!). One bundle of wood was perfect for cooking. If we’d wanted to have a fire to sit out at, we would have needed another bundle. The mosquitos were still bad enough at dusk that we weren’t super interested in sitting out with them!
On our walk after dinner, Daisy and I met another couple who were camping with the most adorable new teardrop trailer. I chatted with them and found out that they were also just embarking on couples camping without kids - their kids were right around the same age as ours! We laughed that we were living parallel lives!
We went to bed early and watched Kramer vs Kramer - an oldie but a great movie. I loved Dustin Hoffman in that movie! We slept much better the second night, after chatting with the front desk about the tick situation and being vigilant with our own tick checks (dog and us). Daisy was up early again on Sunday morning and I was (again) worried she’d go through the screen on the door or put holes in the screen. We NEED to get that screen guard installed for my peace of mind!
Chris and Daisy went out for a quick walk and then we had coffee and omelettes for breakfast. We took a walk around some of the campground that we hadn’t been to before and found another 16 ft Bambi! Daisy was getting tired - at one point she just lay down on the road! - so we didn’t get very far before heading back to our site.
Chris began packing up while I went for a shower. On the way, I met the couple who owned the other Bambi. It’s a small world… they live about 4 blocks away from us in Ottawa! The showers were really clean and there were hardly any bugs. The water took some time to warm up, but once the temperature was right, the shower was quite lovely.
We made another rookie mistake when we started to hitch up the trailer. We needed to use more levelling blocks than usual when we levelled the trailer this time and we didn’t have a great supply. This meant that our chock blocks weren’t as helpful as they should have been and when we pulled up the stabilizers, the trailer rolled backwards a little and came off the levelling blocks causing the front to come off it’s set of blocks. It made a bit of a noise and a few people came over to make sure everything was alright. Luckily for us, there was no harm done (well, except one of our new chairs was leaning against the trailer in such a way that it was damaged somehow when the trailer moved. Darn). Lesson Learned: Get more levelling blocks and maybe another set of chock blocks (and a new chair)!
During our hitching process, the mosquitoes were again, relentless. I had to stand close by and just swat them away from Chris while he was hitching up. Finally, we pulled out at 1:47 pm. We’re always cutting it close to the “check out” time! We headed to the dump station and had to wait for two other trailers to finish up. We’re getting more efficient at dumping now, which is a good thing, because I would hate to have to learn while others are waiting behind us to dump!
We stopped in Perth at Coutes and had a coffee on the front patio before heading home. We arrived back at around 4:30 pm. Overall, despite Chris having low expectations for this trip (due to all of the bugs the weekend before and the ticks we found on Daisy), we had a very enjoyable weekend!
Ottawa - Murphy’s Point Provincial Park - Perth - Murphy’s Point PP - Perth - Ottawa
Towing: 201.2 km
Driving: 40.2 km
Battery: Plugged in
Fresh Water Tank: 70% used
Combined Grey/Black Water Tank: 88% Full
** The black water tank was nearly full at 88%, but it only read 75% full after the trailer fell. I flushed the black water tank before leaving home, so it wouldn’t have been quite as full if I hadn’t flushed it first. I ended up with more water in the black tank than we usually start out with. We also had an empty propane tank, but didn’t know how empty it was! It seems that the stove and fridge don’t take up a lot of energy, but the furnace does! By the end of this trip, we’d only used the furnace a few times when it was quite cold. Also, we’re getting better at storing things, but we still need to add a few more solutions to our clothes closet and the overhead bins.
