Last weekend we took ourselves to Bon Echo Provincial Park for a few days of camping. We were off to a great start as it turned out that these were the first four consecutive days without rain in over a month. It has been close to ten years since I last went to Bon Echo and I had forgotten how much I like it. It is most famous for Mazinaw Rock which stands 100m above the water :
To get a closer look we rented canoes
and were able to get a close look at some pictographs:
I understand there are about 250 of these on the rocks around the lake. We certainly didn’t see that many but the ones we saw were truly fascinating. We also saw this tribute to Walt Whitman:
In the late 1800’s an Inn was built as a religious retreat on the land that is now the park. A subsequent owner, Flora MacDonald Denison, was a Walt Whitman fan and had a quote from one of his poems carved into the rock. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it said and I can’t read it off my photos. Something about the ‘amplitude of time’. Incidentally, the Inn has long since burned down.
There are about half a dozen hiking trails in the park and we chose to do a 9 km hike. The trail looked innocent enough at first but it turned out to be a bit rugged. The parts that were flat had lots of rocks and tree roots and the bugs did get annoying. The parts that were not flat were, well, vertical. It was a bit of a challenge, particularly for the six year old among us, but we were motivated by the promise of a waterfall that was further along the path. The waterfall did not turn out to be as spectacular as we had envisioned :
In fact, it was described as “small and skinny”. It’s true, it wasn’t exactly grand but it was nice in its own way and it provided a great place to have a bit of a break before finishing the hike. Not that we had any choice really, once you start you have to finish.
We also went swimming at the beach, sat around the campfire eating great ‘camp food’ , went to a couple of the lectures and children’s programs and watched some peaceful and beautiful sunsets:
Overall, it was a great little trip, we won’t discuss the part about the dead battery in the van.
