Murphy’s Point Provincial Park – September 2020

I really enjoyed this park, we were here once years ago but I definitely will come back. I have a friend, Erin, who reads my blog and I’m not sure if she has been to this park but if not, her boys would enjoy it. Murphy’s Point is a smallish park but with a lot to offer. It is located on Big Rideau Lake which is part of the historic Rideau Waterway.

The park has 2 campgrounds, 3 Group campgrounds and interior camping as well. We had a great site located by Loon Lake. They do have pull through sites, not very level and some of them are two tiered. Our trailer was in the driveway part and we had to walk down a slope to the area where our firepit was.

The Silver Queen Mine was located here and you can still tour where the mine was and see some old buildings. This mine was an early 1900’s mica mine. I had no idea what mica was until I read about it on the Park information boards. Mica are silicate minerals used in a variety of items; drywalls, paints, auto parts, roofing, electronics. Quite interesting to read about it.

They have 5 trails, we did the Silver Queen Mine Trail which intersects with the Beaver Pond Trail, I think about 3.5-4 kms total. On the Silver Queen Trail you can view a restored early 1900s open pit mica mine, all fenced in and some old buildings. You park and start these two trails across the road from the Lally Homestead. I have to say the Beaver Pond Trail was not well maintained; weeds were growing over parts of the trail and due to the Tick issue you would have thought they would keep the trails clear.

We like to canoe so one day we did the Canoe Loop. We put our canoe in on the main beach on Hogg Bay which goes into Big Rideau Lake. We paddled about 2 hours on Big Rideau Lake, hugging the shoreline to look for things to photograph. We did spot a heron and some ducks. This is a very big lake and lots of motorboats but we started early in the morning so it wasn’t very busy.

Once we arrived at the portage, which was not long, Clint portaged the canoe and I portaged the rest and off we went into Loon Lake. We spent quite a while in this lake paddling the entire perimeter. It is not a big lake but we really enjoyed it. (No motorboats are allowed on Loon Lake)

We spotted a mom loon and a young one. She was still feeding the young one which we thought was odd as it is late in the year.

So we puttered around this lake and then headed to the portage to go back into Hogg Bay which we also paddled the perimeter. We had a great time doing this and spent most of the morning, because we are slow! We like to look at things and investigate the shoreline. We spotted lots of turtles and deer walking through the forest and even a snake! There are many other places to canoe if you wish to do more paddling.

The Lally Homestead trail is super easy, about 800 m and you can see the buildings and farm fields as you walk the trail. It is right across from the Silver Queen Mica Mine Trail.

We also walked the MacPharlan Trail which is about 6 kms and you can hike or bike on it. We chose to walk and it’s a very nice trail, wide and with moderate hills. You cross a little bridge to the old buildings which are kind of cool. This takes you past Loon Lake also. The trail ends at the buildings but we continued past the buildings and the trail turns into the Rideau Trail which is a 300 km hiking trail from Kingston to Ottawa. We only went about another km or so and headed back the way we came. Only about 6 km goes through this park.

I think that’s all the trails we did but we also went biking through some of the closed campgrounds and came across deer frolicking around! Two moms and they each had a fawn and then there was third adult just lounging around. We spent an inordinate amount of time photographing and watching them. However, they were deep in the dark bush, mostly behind trees.

One day we drove into Westport, a cute little touristy town by the water. We bought some beer at Westport Brewery and we didn’t mind their Red Ale but my favourite beer is IPA and their IPA was honestly the worse I ever had so that was disappointing.

All in all I really enjoyed Murphys Point Provincial park and would definitely head there again!

Next stop – Off to Sharbot Lake Provincial Park !