When we kicked off on our trip, we were already seasoned with one passage of Northern Ontario having driven from Ottawa to Shoal Lake, MB in a rented RV three years ago. We had learned from that trip the importance of pacing yourself when travelling with little kids. Simon had just turned 2 and the girls were 4 and 6. We had tried to do the trip in 5 days, 4 nights. It was too fast. We’d drive all day only to arrive at a wonderful spot with great beaches and not have the time to enjoy them. We vowed we’d do better this time.
This year, we gave ourselves at least two nights at every stop and allowed ourselves 7 days and 6 nights to get to Shoal Lake. Thank goodness we did. Pulling the trailer made the kilometres tick by slower than expected and the inefficient fuel economy of our Sequoia meant that we stopped frequently for gas and pee breaks (and landmarks like provincial borders or ice cream or Pooh Bears).
When booking our campsites and planning our travel days, we spaced them about 500km apart expecting that this would be the ideal distance. Our mornings could be leisurely. We’d pack up, start rolling, and put in the first 250km before lunch. After a relaxed lunch stop, we’d coast through the final 250km and arrive at our new site by the 3:00 check-in time. But this never happened. We’ve learned that for every hour of Google maps' driving time, it takes us 80-90 minutes. Our 500km days would end after 7.5-8 hours of sitting together in a confined space rolling into our new resting place around dinner time. This is where our extra day per site was so valuable; we’d spend the evening of arrival to explore the campground and plan how best to fill our entire next day.
Our route through Ontario was fairly straight-forward. We followed the Trans Canada Highway through Renfrew and North Bay with our first stop at Chutes Provincial Park. Next was Lake Superior Provincial Park followed by Sleeping Giant Provincial Park (498kms away and yet still on Lake Superior’s shores). Our final Ontario stop was Blue Lake Provincial Park. If you’ve never driven through Northern Ontario, you should add it to your bucket list. Erik would disagree with me -as a prairie boy- as he finds that he feels claustrophobic diving for so long through canyons of rocks and forests. I find it more like a roller coaster ride where every up has a down and around each corner is a new view. We saw so many beautiful blue lakes, large boulder cuts, and thick green forests. The ditches were ripe with wild flowers and Lake Superior is so vast that you have to drive its shores to really truly appreciate its size.
Chutes Provincial Park
Each provincial park boasted something natural and unique to Ontario. We explored the Aux Sables River at Chutes PP which was used by loggers to send logs down to a collection point. We hiked to see some rock paintings left by First Nations members in Lake Superior PP. While at Sleeping Giant, we braved the frigid temperatures of the water and had a couple of refreshing swims in Lake Superior.
Lake Superior Provincial Park
Blue Lake had the nicest beach and swimming lake but was the worst spot for mosquitoes - it was so bad that the bugs kept us up all night with their humming sound while stalking us through the screen windows. I think Molly slept in her bug jacket just so that she knew she was safe from any possible stray bugs flying in the trailer.
Blue Lake Provincial ParK
The long driving days passed by reasonably quickly thanks to iPads and DVDs. Although the kids can use the words “wifi” and “internet” with reasonable knowledge of the difference, they had a tough time understanding why certain iPad games would work fine in the car while others would not. Simon, in particular, struggled with knowing that we had wifi in the trailer but we didn’t have internet. Through a number of attempts to explain, Erik finally decided to say “there is no internet in the woods” so on our 5th day of driving when we broke out of the wooded Northern Ontario and soared immediately onto flat prairies, Simon exclaimed with genuine enthusiasm “we’re out of the woods! We have internet now!”.
Next stop, Shoal Lake!