Nagagamisis Provincial Park – Summer 2021

So here we are at Nagagamasis Provincial Park, we had site 70, kind of on the water, we have stairs going down to the beach.  Not sure if I will be swimming, it’s only 15 Celsius. There are lots of campsites here that are on the water and they all have a set of stairs leading down to the water. We had received an email from this Park before we left on our trip telling us our site may not look like it’s pictures on their website. The reason for this is that there was a tornado that went through here in the spring and it did quite a lot of damage to a lot of sites, ours was one.  It is so sad to see all the trees down.  There is also no electricity anywhere in the Park and no cellular. But who cares! I love this Park.

This is a big park, Nag Lake on one side and Park Lake (no motor boats allowed) on the other.  We did paddle on Park Lake but not Nag Lake, we didn’t see anything on Park Lake.  Nag Lake is a huge lake and so many motorboats zooming around the water, not worth taking our canoe out. We did see a couple of loons and a merganser family (30 of them) on the lake.  The Park only had one trail open as they were still cleaning up damage from the tornado. There was no fire ban at this park as we are further away from the border to Manitoba.

The nearest town, very small, for gas or groceries, is Hornepayne and it’s about 20 minutes away. The cell service up here is basically non-existent! Hornepayne is a really small town but they do have a statue of a mom bear and 2 cubs.  So there’s that….. Plus Hornepayne is the Geographic Centre of the Province of Ontario. Interesting.

As we were driving back to the Park from Hornepayne, two moose, a Cow and Calf ran across the road in front of the truck but we weren’t quick enough to get any photos. Of course, there are still Sandhill Cranes along the highway!

We walked down to the Boat Launch one day and there were a couple of Bald Eagles flying around the beach area. I was able to get quite a few photos of them.

One day we left the park, turned right and went down about 2 kms to a bridge where we parked the truck and walked to the river (under the bridge.)  We saw 3 mergansers and took photos of a cute chipmunk eating berries.  He was adorable.

We left there and went past the park entrance to Newland Road (dirt road) went down a couple kms but saw nothing except the Sandhill Cranes on the hwy. 

We did go to the dump and I spotted an eagle right away.  Then Clint saw one and we also spotted some juvenile Bald Eagles.  We were photographing the Eagles for quite a while then we left and headed straight across the hwy and down another dirt road. We went down about 4 kms and didn’t see anything except a sign that said if you spot a caribou call the Ministry.  We did not see any which was disappointing. 

Back to the Dump and there was a Bear!  Clint spotted him – I thought it was a garbage bag.  He was really going at the garbage.  We stayed about an hour.  Ministry people came to the dump to bring garbage, twice.  Second time they scared the bear off the garbage and we got some nice pics by some yellow flowers.  He was really hot and panting and didn’t look healthy, probably from eating plastic.  He was not skittish at all.  Probably 2-3 years old, not very big and a male. 

 Back to the park and we parked in a small parking lot, down past site 24. We wanted to walk the dirt road to the Point. Pretty cool once we got to the point, we walked down one side and came back on the other. A family of  Mergansers were on the beach but took off as we got close.  We did see 2 ducks on the Oyster Bay side.  The walk was about 3-3 ½ km and about 1 ½ hours to walk. 

One day it reached about 25 Celsius and we decided to sit on our own beach and have a Beach Day!  Water was cold but I went in anyways.  We took our chairs and beer down the stairs to our own little patch of private beach and we had a nice time watching everyone on their boats, floaties and jet skis.  Lots of boats pulling tubes with people in them around the lake.  Really nice day.  Great day, one of the best this trip so far.

Well we spent 3 days here and now we are off to Fushimi Provincial Park!