Oh Canada. Summer is simply too short! Blink and it’s almost over. Hesitate and the heat is almost gone. If you snooze, you lose the opportunity for precious days on the beach. I thought August was a safe bet… but the third week of August was already be starting to get chilly! Nonetheless… what is summer without at least one camping trip? So, for the first time, we camped without making it all about the beach.

Point Farms Provincial Park is on the west coast of Georgian Bay, not too far from the GTA. This was the first time camping there, and though I was disappointed with the weather, the park itself is lovely. Long sandy shores covered with an incredible array of stones of all colours… pinks, purples, greens, reds… at the visitor centre I learned that Georgian Bay is famous for stones because of the ancient granite formations shaped over thousands of years by glacial activity. The bay’s rugged rocks are often called the “Canadian Shield”, and many are rounded, sculpted, or polished by ice and water, which get thrown up onto the shore. Some of the rocks are exposed bedrock that dates back billions of years, making them some of the oldest visible stones in North America!

And the best part of staying on the west coast is the most gorgeous sunsets that seem to go on forever, considering in the summer the sun doesn’t go down until after 9pm. Every night was like a show of colours.

Next year I will have to make sure to camp a bit earlier to avoid the cooling weather – it’s torturous staring at a beach and not being able to swim!