I have always wanted to go to this Park. Finally we made it. We had one of the nicest sites we have ever had at Ontario Parks. This is a picture of the famous “Sea Lion” so okay, WHY does it look like an elephant?
We were at site 212 right on Marie Louise Lake. Beautiful, large, flat, fairly private site. And look who came for a visit every night ! Skunks are adorable; they come looking for food left out, and then they leave. We never leave food out; Keep a Clean Campsite. Seriously Little Dude, stay outta the fire. No S’mores for you.
It’s a long drive from the highway into the Park and there is not much around so be sure to have all your groceries and what-nots before you get here.
We love sites on the water; so relaxing to sit at the end of the day and enjoy the view; or in the morning with coffee. We watched a seagull feeding off the lake; diving into the lake, getting his dinner. From out of nowhere, two bald eagles swooped in to try their hand (or beak) at fishing. But this seagull was having none of it. We couldn’t believe it but the seagull went after those two bald eagles and they took off. He casually went about diving for his dinner. I was able to get some photos but they were pretty far away so no one shall them ! There are lots of bald eagles in this park and in fact, we have seen a ton of bald eagles on this trip. We also saw quite a few deer in this park and a bear ran across in front of us one evening.
When we arrived here, the parks guy at the gate said there was a mom and cub in the park and they had damaged a trailer a couple of days before we got there. They set up a trap just down from our site to trap them. The morning after we saw the young bear run in front of us, we went to check the trap, from our truck of course, and there was a bear inside. Not inside our truck; inside the Trap. (insert laughter) It was not the mom and cub so probably the young bear we had seen the evening before.
If you like off-road biking, this is a great park. It’s also a very large park with over 80 km of hiking/biking trails. We really liked Joe Creek trail; only 2 km return but when we were there the water levels were low and you could walk all along the river on the flat rocks. Lots of little cascades and rapids. Great photo ops. We did a few other smaller trails. We also went to the Kabeyun Trail Head and did the hike/bike to Tee Harbour and Lehtiner Bay as well as the Sea Lion. Lehtiner Bay was pretty cute. It’s well worth the hiking and/or biking to go see. I think we did about 18 km total that day. Two days later we decided to go back to the Kabeyun Trail head and do the Sawyer Bay trail. I think that was about 16-18 km return also. The trails leading from the Kabeyun Trail head are pretty rocky and lots of roots and ruts etc. The Sawyer Trail is an old logging road but not sure how the logging trucks got down and back, hard enough on my bike ! Steep hills, up and down ! I was tired after those two days for sure.
Silver Islet – We drove to see Silver Islet, a small community where silver was discovered in 1845. Interesting little community.
Eagle Canyon Adventures – This is a great spot. I believe it’s about 50 km from Sleeping Giant. Worth the drive. When you first pull into the parking lot, it’s a little bit of hmmm should we pay to go in ? Well we did and we enjoyed it. My husband did the zipline. Canada’s longest zipline calling itself Canada’s highest, longest and fastest zipline ! They also have 2 suspensions bridges; one is 600 feet across the canyon and hangs at a height of 152 feet above the canyon floor. The second one is 300 feet and about 125 feet above the canyon. They have other hiking trails and picnic areas.
Panorama Amethyst Mine – This was a cool place. I did not know that the amethyst is Ontario’s official gemstone as well as being the birthstone for February babies. They still mine here but mostly for stones as healing properties. You can take a tour which is above ground by the way. And then dig for your own amethysts. They charge $3 per pound. Surprising how many amethysts you get in a pound.
Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park – There is no camping at this park; just trails and picnic areas. You can walk to and view a 150 metre wide gorge that drops 100 metre down. Like a tiny Grand Canyon wannabe.
Trums Travels 