Camping in Ontario: Presqu’ile Provincial Park in Brighton, Ontario #FavouritesFriday

You know how, sometimes, memories that you had of doing something awesome as a child prove to be rose-coloured when you grow up and experience it again and find out that it really wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be? Rest assured: this is NOT one of them. We didn’t have an awful lot of money {read: we had very, very little money} when I was growing up, but we took a vacation every summer for a week to Presqu’ile Provincial Park (in Brighton, Ontario). I didn’t know back then that it was only 30 minutes from our house – the anticipation made it seem like it was HOURS away! Every memory that I have there is happy – from roasting marshmallows, to going to the family campfire activities, to meeting other kids (Alexandra Malcom from Ajax – if you ever read this, Hi!!), to spending hours a day biking around the park, to skipping rocks on the beach, to sitting on the giraffe tree on the boardwalk trail, to running for cover from the impending rain storm in the dark… Presqu’ile is, in my (admittedly limited) experience, the best place to go camping in Ontario. Certainly the best provincial park for family camping.

Not a lot has changed in Presqu’ile – they’ve updated the boardwalk a few times (for the better, I’d say!) and tore down the old Nature Centre to build a new visitor’s centre (I still prefer the old brown one that you see in the background of the picture above with us sitting on the anchor)… but the park is still just as wonderful as I’d remembered. Marya and I, along with the (much appreciated!) help of our mom, took the kids camping there a few weeks ago and everyone LOVED it. 
In comparison to campgrounds like Sandbanks, most sites at Presqu’ile are HUGE, and you can’t reach out and touch your neighbour’s tent when you’re sitting at your campfire. We fit 2 very large tents + 1 med tent + 1 dining tent + 2 vans + 5 bikes on our site and STILL had a huge amount of space for running around! We also didn’t spot any poison ivy this year – whereas sandy camp grounds like Sandbanks and the Pinery are overrun with poison ivy.
Presqu’ile still has fantastic bike trails – we were able to bike from our campsite all the way out to the point where the lighthouse is located without worrying about cars. (My 9 year old nephew, by the way, attached my bike trailer to his bike and pulled my 3 year old son all the way from the light house back to the campsite – about a 4km bike ride!)
The sand beaches are large and uncrowded. They’re not quite as ‘pretty’ as Sandbanks, but they work just fine for making sand castles and playing in the water, and you don’t have to worry about your kids getting lost in the crowds. 
As much fun as sand beaches are, hosing the kids off every single evening before going into the tent is…less fun. So for those days when the kids want to go to the beach but you’re not up for the cleanup – there’s the rock beaches! Besides building towers and learning how to skip stones on the water, there are hundreds – thousands – of fossils to be found at the beach! 

I was only there with the kids for 2 days and found that wasn’t nearly long enough – when you’ve got trips to the light house & nature centre, afternoons on the beach, and bike rides – there’s hardly enough time to go enjoy the huge boardwalk trail! 

It was at Presqu’ile that I learned to identify invasive species in the wetlands – such as this Purple Loosetrife. It’s Purple. It’s on the Loose. And it’s causing Strife. They have tours with Nature guides throughout the day who will introduce you to the plants, animals, and bugs that call the marsh habitat home – something I look forward to taking the kids on in a few years when they’re a little older. 
The park staff at Presqu’ile are such good sports when it comes to teaching & entertaining the kids – they led a sing-along, did a little drama, and taught us a bit about the history of the area and a notorious bootlegger. The camp fire was disappointingly small, but they did serve lemonade after the program, so I guess that makes up for it. 😉 
Fortunately for us, we didn’t have any rainy days (although we did have one very, VERY rainy night!) – but when the rain comes, there’s the Nature Centre and the Interactive Lighthouse Visitor’s Centre in the park, and a tonne of great little museums and shops to visit just outside of the park in Brighton. 
If you’re looking for a place to camp next summer in southern Ontario, I highly recommend Presqu’ile Provincial Park. They’ve got a huge amount of non-reserved sites, we’ve always been able to show up early in the day without a reservation and grab a fantastic site. Cheers, and happy camping! 

post script: I was having issues with my HTC 1M8 phone camera lens, so I got to try out the new Samsung Galaxy S5 from Rogers for this camping trip! The pictures are crisp, clear, and high-res – and I LOVED playing around with the panorama function (as seen in the pic of our campsite). However, I realized that, on the whole, I really just missed the HTC with the dual camera. I love the camera on the HTC so much, in fact, that I’m going to be doing a post about it later this month (once I get the camera all fixed up) – because out of all of the phones I’ve tried so far this year, the HTC 1M8 is the best for blogging AND life as a parent. And as a Netflix addict. 😉

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Jenn vanOosten

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and love my city. I'm a Netflixer, choral music geek, bookworm, inventor of recipes (I take Artistic Licence on EVERYTHING that I make), wife of one, mother of two, and owner of a neurotic Schnauzer. I respect people who respect others. I love good food that's well done, but my favourite lunch is KD & hotdogs. With ketchup. I'm addicted to Clearance Shopping. I will ALWAYS get the product that I want at the price that I want, eventually.

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