Camping at Bon Echo Provincial Park

I’ve been dying to go to the Bon Echo Provincial Park for a couple of years. Finally I was able to convince my friends that we should camp there this year for our annual trip. Spoiler: They fell in love with it!

Bon Echo Provincial Park is about 4 hours away from Toronto. The only downside of our camping weekend was the fire ban that was in effect for all of Ontario.  We camped at site 208 in Hardwood Hills and had a fantastic time. The campsite was a walk in. You park your car and then go down the hill into your campsite. It was beautiful! We felt like we were in the middle of the forest, and we couldn’t see our neighbors. We had some nocturnal visitors, a raccoon and a field mouse.

This park is HUGE. We were on the other side of Mazinaw Lake, but we drove through the park and it was endless.
(We did have a chance to peek at the Fairway campsites, and they were considerably smaller than ours.)  Bon Echo has a slew of activities for you to do. You can go rock climbing, kayaking, canoeing, or hiking. If you don’t have your own boat you can rent canoes and paddle boats.

The beaches are beautiful and perfect for swimming. You can hop on the Wanderer boat for a relaxing tour of Upper Mazinaw Lake. The tour talks about the about interesting features of the huge Mazinaw Rock and its native pictographs. The tour is $7.00 for adults and $4.00 for kids. We didn’t have enough time to go on this tour, so it’s on my To Do list! This was my favourite provincial park of the two that I’ve camped in before (Ferris, Presqu’ile) and I know that I’ll be back. Next camping trip is in September, at Bruce Peninsula National Park!