May 2-4 Shenanigans: Part 2 Bon Echo

The plan for Sunday was to go paddling in Bon Echo Provincial park, but the weather forecast was not looking very promising with a high chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Nonetheless, we decided to take our chances and get up early to beat the rain, so we were up and out of the house by 8:00 and arrived at the park just after 10:00. After taking a wrong turn into the campground, we found our way to the river where we launched our canoe and started paddling out to the cliffs.

It was a nice paddle to the cliffs and the shores of the lake were very quiet since all the campers were still on their sites enjoying their morning breakfast routines – or staying warm around their fires or in their campers and tents. One thing we didn’t really pay attention to when checking the weather was the temperature. It was nice and warm when we left the house, but the closer we got to the park, the lower the temperature dropped. When we arrived it was a mere 9 degrees – and we were in shorts and t-shirts.

To keep from freezing, we just paddled a little harder and eventually the sun rose high enough to provide a little extra warmth. We cruised out through the narrows on Mazinaw Lake towards the towering cliffs to look for the pictographs. We’ve seen them many times, but we never seem to get tired of spending some time admiring the views from below the towering cliffs – it really is amazing how close we can get to these artifacts left by people from so long ago (remember, no touching the pictographs!) . There really is a lot of interesting history in this park.

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By the time we got to the end of the main cliff wall, it was getting busier on the lake as it was warming up and the canoe rental store was open and campers were joining us out on the water. We decided it was time to go check out the Clifftop Trail before it got too busy. This trail is an easy 1.5 km loop, with over 150 steps to climb to give you panoramic views of the park and Mazinaw Lake. It didn’t take us long to reach the top, but the black flies made it difficult to stay for any length of time. We posed for some pictures and then headed back down to our canoe.

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As we paddled back to the river to our vehicle, there were some brave campers preparing to go swimming at the beach. They didn’t spend much time in the water, but I guess there are some brave souls out there that want summer beach weather to be happening soon. Honestly, I might have tried swimming if I had my gear… maybe…

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The weather had definitely warmed up a bit and we enjoyed the rest of our evening back home. The rain did eventually show up and we were glad we got out when we did.

Thanks for following along on our long weekend adventures. If you did something special on the May 2-4 weekend we would love to hear about it in the comments below!