We love Bon Echo Provincial Park, we have been here many times and even sometimes just go for the day as it’s only a 90 minute drive from our house. Set on Mazinaw Lake, the cliffs are spectacular and a huge draw for tourists. They also have 6 trails, one being a Pet Exercise trail, a few beaches, a dog beach and lots of paddling/kayaking options. We did drive to the far end of the Park and portage our canoe about 3/4 km down to Joe Perry lake. We paddled around for quite a while and we tried to get to Pearson Lake but we got bogged down and couldn’t get through. That was the first time we couldn’t get to that lake. There are back country sites on both these lakes as well. All we saw was a Loon, not much wildlife around. We did a couple of trails, one being the first loop of the Abes and Essens trail and it was clearly in need of some maintenance as you will see in below photos. Parts of the trail were almost covered by foliage to the point some of it was hitting us in the face. We have a huge tick problem in Ontario and they are always telling us to be careful and stay on the trails etc which is great, but maybe do a bit of maintenance. We always see a lot of staff just driving around, not sure what they are doing but perhaps they would like to do a hike (with some clippers)! We also did quite a bit of biking around the campground. It’s a great park and we try to get there somewhat regularly. We also like to sit in our canoe, on Mazinaw Lake, and watch the cliff climbers on Mazinaw Rock, it’s a bit boring as it takes them forever to move ! lol
High Pines Trail 
Bon Echo Inn sign at the location where the Inn used to be 
A miniature of the Inn 
One of the original buildings on the Inn’s property, set right on Mazinaw Lake 
View from the point of the “rock” 
The “Narrows” you can paddle from one part of Mazinaw Lake to the other side 
It’s hard to tell but there are about a dozen people, or more, cliff climbing this rock 
You can sort of see the people in this pic, I did not have my good camera. They are in the middle just above the greenery 
Loon on Joe Perry Lake 
We did the first loop which was close to 4 kms and the trail was very steep in spots and lots of rocks and roots to go over/around 
Clutes Lake on the trail 
This was the trail, the water was halfway up my calf and we had to balance on logs to get through ! 
This trail needs some maintenance for sure
That’s it for our Ontario Parks this summer although we will be heading to Algonquin this fall for a bit to find some moose to photograph. It will be a while before I post those photos that I take in the park so after this post, we will move on to Spain and Portugal. We were there last September and October and it was a great trip.
See you soon and enjoy your Fall !
Trums Travels 