Bon Echo is a popular and well known provincial park located about half way between Toronto and Ottawa. Within the park’s boundaries is the massive Mazinaw Lake which boasts 100-metre sheer cliffs, lots of kayaking and canoeing, fishing, hiking, and chilling on the beach. It’s been on my radar for a few years now and finally this June we got the chance to go.

June. Did I say June? Why oh why did we choose June? This is the Month of Mosquitoes. Boatloads of Black Flies. Various biting bugs, all swarming down on us in an orgy of frenzied feeding.

We almost gave up on day 2 and packed it all in.

But only the strong survive when it comes to camping!

So when we weren’t swatting bugs and cursing like pirates, this is what we saw:

DAY ONE: SETTLING IN

It was an almost 4-hour drive to Bon Echo so once we got to the park we found our site in the radio-free Midway campground and got busy setting up. The site was quite good, lots of privacy and shade and plenty of space for our tent and gazebo. I always choose a site close to the comfort station for those late night pees.

While setting up we immediately noticed it was much buggier than usual this year. That only made us work faster to get the tents up! Then with map in hand we headed to the lake to figure out where the rentals were and where the best beaches were. Mazinaw Lake did not disappoint! The water is super clean and the scenery was stunning.

There were loads of people taking an afternoon paddle through the channel that connects the Upper Lake to the Lower Lake, known as “The Narrows”. The water was really shallow so any watercraft passing through had to stay between the buoys or risk getting stuck on the banks of the shore. Seiji found a nearby spot to do a bit of casting. By then we were exhausted so it was dinner, a hot shower at the comfort station, and off to bed to hopefully be rested for the next day. At night we could hear coyotes howling nearby so it took a while to fall asleep!

DAY TWO: PADDLING MAZINAW LAKE

The impressive 100-metre cliffs of Mazinaw Lake are amazing to see from a distance, but get up close to them and you’ll quickly notice the hundreds of red pictographs that adorn them. They were painted by the Indigenous people of the area and they are the largest collection of rock art in Southern Ontario. The cliffs are now a National Historic Site.

If you are renting canoes, kayaks or SUPs from the rental centre, it’s easy to find the pictographs. From the rental centre just head for the Upper Lake by passing through The Narrows and as soon as you pass through head for the cliffs and paddle slowly. The red ochre paintings sometimes just look like abstract or geometric designs, but some of them clearly show people and animals. Get as close as you can to the cliffs and you’ll start to spot them right away.

The lake is truly massive; you can go slowly along the cliffs for ages and keep finding more and more. We paddled for about 2.5 km until the cliffs came to an end, so we crossed the lake and paddled back along the other shoreline where there were lots of houses and cottages. It was hard work crossing the lake due to the wind so we pulled up on one of the beaches and took a break and a swim, and to stretch our aching backs and butts. The water was COLD by the way!

Back at the site it was back to bugs. Even bug spray wasn’t helping. Is Bon Echo always like this, or is it just June? I keep hearing that “this year is really bad” so perhaps we were just unlucky. But it was so bad we actually considered packing up the next morning and leaving.

DAY THREE: BONNECHERE CAVES

The Bonnechere Caves are about an hour’s drive from Bon Echo so it’s an easy day trip. What a relief we felt to be in an air conditioned car with no mosquitoes! Bliss. Well I’m glad we didn’t throw in the towel and leave because then we would have missed out on these amazing caves. If you’re camping at Bon Echo I highly recommend doing this as a side trip!

To visit the caves you join a guided tour led by a local guide so explains the history of the area, how the caves were found, the determined (crazy?) owner who would go spelunking in waist-deep water to see how far the caverns went, and what kind of fossils can be found in the caves. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and made it very interesting, especially when she turned off the lights during the tour to show us what Absolute Darkness really looks like when you can’t even see the hand in front of your face.

Visiting the Bonnechere Caves was a very cool experience and I would highly recommend it. After the caves we went into Eganville (the nearest town) for lunch at Rio’s restaurant which has a patio overlooking the Bonnechere River. I couldn’t help thinking about the founder of the caves who was mad enough to go exploring the caves and caverns all alone with nothing but a rope around his waist and one flashlight!

Back at Bon Echo the bugs continued the be relentless. We went to the beach to cook dinner hoping to escape from the mosquitoes and while it was a bit better we were still getting bitten. We ended up sitting on the floor of the tent playing UNO before bed because even the mosquito gazebo wasn’t keeping the bugs out when we sat at the picnic table. My husband always says that camping is one of those things that makes you appreciate your own house. So on Day 4, right after breakfast, we packed everything up in a big hurry and got the hell out.

DAY FOUR – TIME TO GO HOME

I can see why camping is not for everybody. It’s a lot of work, you get sweaty, it can be buggy, you don’t have the comforts of your own bed, you can’t find where you put your stuff because everything is in a backpack or a bag, and at night you hear the sounds of the forest like screeching owls and howling coyotes.

But still, it’s worth it for the memories. To me nothing says summer in Canada like camping by a beautiful lake and heading out for a paddle. I hope that when we camp in August it won’t be quite so buggy.